Thestral's Calling: Calista Snape Volume III
by Arinus
Summary: Third in series. Snape's daughter fic. After graduating from Hogwarts, Calista Snape's plans include a new career at St. Mungo's, working with the Committee for Experimental Charms, and building her relationship with her boyfriend, Gerald Boot — but shadows and blood still follow her and her father, as the Second Wizarding War approaches. AU, but all in-character; well-written.
1. The Shortest Summer

**Thestral's Calling: Calista Snape Volume III**

 _Sequel to "Always in Your Shadow" and "The Blood of Your Veins". Snape's daughter fic. After graduating from Hogwarts, Calista Snape's plans include a new career at St. Mungo's, working with the Committee for Experimental Charms, and building her relationship with her boyfriend, Gerald Boot — but shadows and blood still follow her and her father, as the Second Wizarding War approaches. AU, but all in-character; well-written. Follows canon wherever possible. GoF-DH. Main ship is OFC/OMC._

 _ **Rating: T+/M**_ _for violence, language, adult themes, some mild to moderate sexual content between consenting adults (not explicit). General recommendation 15+_

 _ **Trigger Warnings:**_ _References to past child abuse and PTSD, violence in future chapters._

 _While it is not required to have read the previous two stories, it is recommended, because relationships between main characters have been previously established and some prior events will be referenced throughout._

—

 **1: The Shortest Summer**

Calista Snape stood outside the dilapidated brick building, willing her heart to a normal pace. In the last few years, she had endured a barrage of psychic attacks by her mother, Bellatrix Lestrange; she had faced an agent of the Dark Lord disguised as her Defence teacher, and nearly been mauled by a werewolf who, ironically enough, _also_ came in the form of a Defence teacher, and she had seen one of her best friends Petrified by a basilisk.

She had traveled the dark paths of memory, facing her own darkest memories as well as her father's. She had seen him willingly accept the Dark Mark in a ritual of blood and pain, and she had seen a vivid replay of the same Mark being set cruelly into the skin of her back long ago, by a wicked silver blade and her mother's hand, and _still_ she had survived.

All of that, and countless other trials, should have made her fearless. After all, what could possibly lurk in the shadows of a worn-out old department store that could compare to the threats and fears she had already faced?

 _A job interview, that's what_. Calista shuddered, and forced herself to take a deep breath, but it did little to steady her nerves. Still, even if she couldn't quell her fears, she could certainly conceal them. She carefully rearranged her features, and cleared the surface of her mind, erecting a barrier of calm in front of the jangling, chaotic thoughts within.

She glanced up at the weathered sign above the dusty window display, confirming for what had to be the hundredth time that she was in the right place. _Purge and Dowse, Ltd.,_ the sign read. Calista nodded, and leaned close to the window, where a dilapidated mannequin in an ugly green dress watched her silently.

"Erm, excuse me," Calista muttered, against the glass, "I'm here to see — er, I'm supposed to meet with Imelda Hipworth."

The mannequin jerked its head forward slightly, and lifted a beckoning finger. Calista took a deep breath, and stepped through the glass.

Inside was a bustle of activity; a queue of witches and wizards milled around a busy information desk, manned by a tired-looking witch with iron-grey curls. A mediwitch bustled by, carrying a tray of potions and instruments, and muttering something darkly under her breath about shift changes.

Calista was tempted to step back out the way she'd come; but of course, the dusty shop window had been a one-way illusion, and she'd need to exit by other means. Besides, she'd already come this far, and it wasn't _just_ this job that she was here for. There was so much more at stake.

She reminded herself sternly of the postcard she'd received by owl, just three days ago:

 _Hello Miss Snape,_

 _Splendid job on your exams — Ignus told me we got them in already, record time, I must say. I had an inkling you'd do well in Charms, of course, but I see you managed an Outstanding score in four other subjects, as well. We're very eager to have you come and work with us; do be sure to send word once you've officially started at St. Mungo's, so we can begin the process of having you contracted out to us. It's looking like once a week, probably on Fridays, since we're down a healer that day and you did say you were capable of lending a hand in that regard, as well._

 _Looking forward to working with you — oh, and don't pay much mind to Astra._

 _Sincerely,_

 _Gilbert Wimple_

She had no idea what he meant by 'Astra', but since she wanted nothing more than to work with the Committee for Experimental Charms, and was remarkably being offered the chance through a very clever loophole in the rules requiring three years' experience and an official nomination to do so, the note was otherwise very encouraging.

She squared her shoulders, inwardly thanking Professor Flitwick for the umpteenth time, for helping her publish her research in the _Experimental Charms Journal_ , and for introducing her to Mr. Wimple and to Mr. Ivanforth, who headed the Committee.

"Hello? Miss? Which floor do you need?"

Calista started slightly, realising belatedly that she'd reached the front of the queue, and that the harried-looking witch behind the reception desk was addressing her with more than a modicum of impatience.

"Oh," she said, hastily, "I'm sorry — erm, I need Potions —"

"The Potions and Plant Poisoning ward's on the third floor," the receptionist said, in clipped tones, "Which patient are you here to visit?"

"Huh? Oh — no, I'm not visiting a patient, I'm here to meet with Imelda Hipworth. About — erm, about a job."

The witch leaned forward and peered at her over the counter, seeming to take her measure.

"You're here about a job?" she asked, frowning. "In Hipworth's department?"

Calista nodded. "Yes. I do have an appointment."

"Hm." The witch lifted a brow, bordering on dismissal, and then shrugged, as if it were of no concern to her. "Well, you asked for the wrong department. Potions _Brewing_ is in the basement —"

"Of course it is," Calista muttered, feeling a stab of disappointment. Seven years in a dungeon wasn't enough, apparently; she was _still_ going to have to spend most of her time below ground.

"You get to it through that portrait, over there —" The witch smirked, suddenly. "Well; that's the _way_ down there, anyway. I doubt _you'll_ actually get through."

In an instant, Calista abandoned her careful plan — and her father's advice — of displaying only her best behaviour. She scowled, menacingly. "Precisely _what_ is that supposed to mean?"

The witch took a surprised step back, brow going up again, and then, maddeningly, she grinned.

"Well, well," she said, "Maybe you'll prove me wrong after all, eh? Go talk to the portrait, dear."

Calista opened her mouth, but even if she'd had a follow-up retort, the receptionist had already moved on to the next person in the queue. Calista frowned, and walked over to the indicated portrait.

It was an oil painting, of a stern, middle-aged man with silver hair; in front of him, vials and jars of Potions ingredients lay spread around on a dark table, and a heavy pewter cauldron stirred itself. A tiny lacquered plaque was affixed to the wall, beneath the painting. Calista leaned down to read it, squinting at the tiny letters:

 _Gaspard Shingleton. Celebrated Inventor of the Self-Stirring Cauldron._

"What on Earth are you looking at down there, young lady?"

Calista started, for a second time. She looked up, meeting the portrait's oversized gaze.

"I was reading your plaque."

"Reading my plaque? Am I to take it, then, that you don't know me by sight?"

"Erm — am I meant to? I do know about your cauldrons, though." She couldn't help but wrinkle her nose, slightly, when she said it. She could practically hear her father's voice, slinking into her eardrum, a coiled snake of disapproval.

 _Self-stirring cauldrons_ , it said, contemptuously, _What's next — self-spelling wands?_

"Well, of course you do," the portrait said, a bit haughtily, "Everyone does. They're revolutionary. And, as it happens, they've made me very, very wealthy."

"Erm. Good for you, I suppose."

"Yes," the portrait said, though she noted that his voice had gone quite flat. "Good for me, I suppose, indeed. Now, then — this area's off limits, except to employees. You should get to wherever you're getting, and leave me to my wealthy misery."

Calista blinked. "All right," she said, "But this _is_ where I'm getting to — or at least that's what I was told. I need to get into the Potions Brewing Department; I have an employment interview."

The portrait peered at her closely now, much as the receptionist had done. " _Do_ you, now?"

Calista felt a flare of impatience in her chest. "Do you get a lot of visitors falsely claiming they're here for a job?" she queried, a bit crossly; between the receptionist and the portrait, she'd been delayed nearly ten minutes, and in another five, she would be late.

The portrait smirked. "Perhaps. Imelda asked you to come in, did she?"

"Obviously. Is this really a problem you face? People coming in for imaginary interviews?"

"Oh, heavens no," the portrait said, with a dark little chuckle. "The _interviews_ are real enough; it's just that most of the dunderheads they send to me haven't got the slightest chance of making it a week into the job."

"Dunderheads? I can't imagine the calibre of applicants you've seen so far, but _I_ scored Outstanding in Potions at both the O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. level, _and_ I achieved a perfect score on the Poisons and Antidotes exam — oh, and I _always_ stir my own cauldron, thank you very much."

She added this last bit contemptuously; too late, she realised her mistake. Pompous and irritating though this particular portrait may have been, it _was_ her portal to the job interview that she was supposed to be at in precisely two minutes.

The portrait narrowed its eyes. "I'm going to overlook that last bit," it said, and then: "Tell me, young lady, what would you do if you saw someone adding too many porcupine quills to a Burn-Healing Paste?"

"There _are_ no porcupine quills in a Burn-Healing Paste," Calista snapped, impatiently; her interview was in _one minute_ , now, and at this rate she was never getting through. "And if I _did_ see someone adding them, I'd freeze their cauldron and then duck for cover, because they'd explode immediately upon contact with the fire salamander scales — and by the way, self-stirring cauldrons weren't invented that long ago, aren't you still alive? I thought sentient portraits were only supposed to be painted of dead people."

The portrait glowered. "Astra might as well _be_ the death of me," it muttered, and then, astoundingly — _finally_ — it swung open.

"Imelda," the portrait called, haughty voice echoing down the hall, "Your two o'clock is here — and I do hate to admit this, because she's an impetuous little wretch, but she's got the job."

"Huh?" Calista blinked, just as a matronly woman she'd seen plastered over many of the posters in the hospital's' lobby approached, clad in no-nonsense brown robes.

"Miss Snape, I presume?" the woman said, meeting her in the space behind the shadow of the still-open portrait.

"What?" the portrait snarled, muffled through the back of its canvas, " _Snape?_ I just hired a _Snape_? And I thought my day couldn't possibly get any worse —"

"Imelda Hipworth," the woman said, extending her hand to shake Calista's, and neatly interrupting the portrait's railing with her crisp tone, "Head of the Potions Brewing Department at St. Mungo's. You've already met our benefactor, Mr. Shingleton. Come with me, please, and I'll introduce you to the rest of the staff — or at least, the ones that will be working the day shift with you."

She followed Mrs. Hipworth down into the space behind the portrait. The portrait swung abruptly closed, enveloping the small corridor in sudden darkness. Mrs. Hipworth sighed, and lit her wand, and then she tapped it to a tile at the other end of the space, revealing a well-lit corridor beyond.

"Honestly," she muttered, "They deserve each other; this way, Miss Snape."

She followed into a rickety lift at the end of the corridor, that brought them below ground. They turned a corner after getting off the lift, into yet another corridor with one door at the end, and one at either side of it, against the left and right walls. but it was one against the left wall that Mrs. Hipworth was motioning her through.

"That one's the other entrance to this department," Mrs. Hipworth explained, gesturing to the door at the very end of the hall, "You'll use that one when you come in to work, I expect, it's faster — remind me to show you the way in before you leave. Across the hall is where the Apprentice Brewers and the interns work, making the simpler potions — Pepperup Potions, Boil-Cure Potions, that sort of thing — but you'll be in here."

She pushed open the left-hand door; Calista caught _Antidotes — Authorised Personnel Only_ lettered in black against the frosted glass.

Despite the room's underground location, it glowed brightly with what Calista could only assume was artificial daylight, streaming in from above; it reminded Calista very strongly of the Enchanted Ceiling in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, except that she'd just _been_ outside, and it wasn't as sunny out there as it was in this stone-walled room.

There was a large worktable at the center, directly beneath the enchanted skylight, around which workstations were set up at evenly-spaced intervals; each of them contained a self-stirring cauldron, at least of three of which were actively stirring themselves. Two figures were hunched over other cauldrons, muttering to themselves and adding ingredients. They glanced up, periodically and grimly, as if checking for a sinister professor to appear at their shoulder.

Mrs. Hipworth led Calista to this work area, and introduced her to the two that were there, a man and a woman, both of whom appeared grizzled, tired, and not at all in the mood to meet new company.

"Griselle, Hector, this is Miss Calista Snape. She'll be joining you on the day shift — she's very well-versed in antidotes. Miss Snape, this is Griselle Jones and Hector Fortunado. They've both been with the department for a very long time."

"Oh, aye," Griselle muttered, "Long time — before _she_ was here, and before these blasted cauldrons —"

"That will do, Miss Jones," said, matter-of-factly, "Come, Miss Snape. I'll show you the Supply Room."

She led Calista to a thick black door set in the left-hand wall. Inside, illuminated shelves rose from floor to ceiling, stocked with neatly labelled, perfectly organised ingredients. She felt her first glimmer of excitement since arriving, despite herself; like the room beyond, the Supply Room was well lit, and it would be easy to find whatever she was looking for, here.

"Oh," she commented, spying the packaging date on a jar of terag leaves, "These labels are very helpful — you can tell when the ingredients are at their peak."

"Oh, yes," Mrs. Hipworth said, a bit proudly, "We have a state-of-the-art setup here; it's all thanks to Mr. Shingleton's generosity. Before he made this department his personal project, it was just me, slaving over a dented cauldron in a closet."

She chuckled, in an odd, dark fashion that led Calista to believe that she wasn't exaggerating at all. She looked around, wondering what massive sum of money it must have taken to turn a single cauldron in a dingy closet into all _this_.

A murmur of voices carried from somewhere out of sight — she realised, belatedly, that the supply room was even larger than she had initially imagined, and that they were not alone in it.

"Ah, that must be Kyle," Mrs. Hipworth said, bustling suddenly along the space between two of the tall shelves. Calista followed, flanked by every sort of root imaginable on one side, and a wall of eyeballs on the other. A rising male voice came into clearer focus as they neared the end of the lane.

" — _not_ a reasonable substitute," the voice said, practically breaking with exasperation, "They're not even in the same _genus_ , you can't be serious —"

"Oh, I'm _quite_ serious," came a female voice, light and lilting. "Trust me, Kyle; you'll see, once the infarction's finished —"

" _Infusion!_ " Kyle howled, just as he came into view, when Calista and Mrs. Hipworth rounded the corner, "It's an _infusion_ , an infarction has nothing to do with potions — honestly, I _can't_ —" he caught sight of the new arrivals, and stopped mid-sentence, pasting a false, awkward smile on his flushed face. "Oh. Mrs. Hipworth. Erm — hello, ma'am."

"Hello, Mr. Macmillan," Mrs. Hipworth said, quite pleasantly, as if she hadn't noticed Kyle's outburst. "I'd like you to meet your newest co-worker, Miss Calista Snape."

Kyle's face fell, the very picture of dread. "Snape? Not like — not _the_ Snape —?"

Calista scowled at the man behind Mrs. Hipworth's back, but _he_ was in her full view, and he didn't quite dare return it. He looked to be somewhere around five years her senior, and there _was_ something vaguely familiar about him. She supposed she might have seen him around Hogwarts, but she couldn't recall with any certainty.

"If you're talking about _Professor Snape_ ," Calista said, levelly, "He's my father."

"Oh, splendid," Kyle said, in a tone that implied that it was anything but. He excused himself as quickly as possible; Calista could have sworn she heard him mutter, as he passed: "Another half-wit tyrant who'll think she's in charge —"

"Ahem," Mrs. Hipworth said, suddenly and with quite a bit more volume than was strictly necessary, "I have one final introduction to make, and it's the most important one; you see, I myself have many duties that take me beyond the scope of this department, and as such, you won't see me here in this unit on a daily basis."

"Oh." Calista glanced at the woman that stood a few paces away, and did an instant double-take.

She was strikingly beautiful, tiny and delicate-looking, with an angelic face and wide blue, china-doll eyes; her hair was an unnaturally pale shade of blonde that Calista was certain her Hogwarts rival, Olivia Avril, would have given her wand hand for, and despite the plain, serviceable robes that Mrs. Hipworth and the rest of the employees Calista had met wore, _this_ woman was wearing silk robes that looked so fine and ornate that she thought even her Aunt Narcissa would have struggled to afford them.

"I don't generally get involved in the day-to-day workings of the department," Mrs. Hipworth said. Calista noticed that her mouth had gone quie thin, along with her tone. "That's all handled by my second-in-command; Miss Snape, I'd like you to meet our Senior Potions Expert. She manages the Potions Brewers directly; you'll report to her, and you'll look to her for instruction and, ah — training."

The blonde woman smiled prettily, but Calista had a keen enough eye to notice the glimmer of challenge in her eyes; she thought for the second time in as many minutes of Olivia Avril, her least favourite former Hogwarts roommate.

"Hello, Miss… Snape, did you say?" she didn't seem to direct the question to anyone in particular, and her gaze remained fixed at a point just to Calista's right side, as if she were not quite worthy of notice. "It's a pleasure, I'm sure. Allow me to introduce myself; I'm Astra Shingleton; my husband Gaspard is the benefactor of this ward."

Calista felt a sudden and distinct sinking in her gut. She had a feeling she knew, now, what Mr. Wimple had meant when he'd written _Don't pay too much mind to Astra_. That sounded well and good, but Mrs. Hipworth had made it sound like she'd be seeing a lot of this Astra woman…

"If you have any questions at any time, you can come to me," the woman said, in a melodic, lilting sort of voice, and then, confirming Calista's worst fears: "I'll be your _direct_ supervisor."

"Well," Mrs. Hipworth said, in clipped tones, "I believe that's all in order. I have somewhere else to be, Miss Snape, so I'll see you out. You should get your hire paperwork by owl in the next few days, and we'll send a follow-up when you're cleared to start. It usually takes about two weeks."

She started to follow Mrs. Hipworth out; walking between the well-lit, superbly organised shelves, it was almost possible to allow herself to believe that this wouldn't be so bad, after all, despite a potentially troublesome supervisor. After all, who could _possibly_ be a more demanding perfectionist than her father?

And then, she heard a sharp, pretty voice call after her:

"I do hope this one knows how to make a proper infarction, Imelda."

 _Great_ , Calista thought darkly, _That arsehole Kyle, whoever he is, is right: she's a bloody halfwit._

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

"Calista, darling, do come in. I've just finished setting us tea in the sunroom."

In an instant, Calista was swept into the foyer of Malfoy Manor, and simultaneously into her Aunt Narcissa's arms; nevermind that they had only parted days ago, and that she'd just spoken to her aunt a few hours ago on the fire.

Aunt Narcissa wasn't _always_ this affectionate, but she had her moments. Sometimes, they were terribly tender moments — like when Calista had finally confessed to her aunt a few scant details of the abuse she had suffered as a small child at her mother's hands, and Narcissa had held Calista in away she hadn't even realised she'd _needed_ ; in a way she'd never known that a mother was supposed to do.

Even when Calista had argued and grumbled, and generally behaved in a manner consistent with her status as a rebellious teenager, Narcissa had fussed and spoiled, providing her with an endless supply of clothes and cosmetics that Calista had, of course, claimed not to want and myriad books that she had accepted far more graciously.

More than that, she had repeatedly played the peacemaker between her niece and her husband, and even occasionally between Calista and her _father_ , who had been much more reluctant than Narcissa to recognise and accept the telltale signs, over the years, that Calista was growing up.

Such moments were precious, and touching, and nearly impossible to explain, when her Aunt Andromeda or her cousin Tonks wondered why pleasing Aunt Narcissa, and keeping her portrait on the famed Black Family Tree intact, were so important to Calista.

But then, of course, there were the _other_ moments when Narcissa showed her affection most readily; the awful, uncomfortable, gut-squirmingly embarrassing ones, like when Narcissa had decided that Calista needed a makeover at a snooty salon when she was thirteen, or when she had dragged Calista into a store full of brightly-coloured lingerie and refused to leave without supplying her with some.

There were some cringingly awkward conversations, too, where her aunt had compensated for her amusement at Calista's evident embarrassment with excessive tenderness; the conversation where she'd realised she wasn't in love with Marcus Flint, and the one a year and a half later when she'd realised she _was_ in love with Gerald Boot; the one where her aunt had advised her in setting her physical boundaries with boys, or on how to know when she might be ready to have sex.

And then, there was _this_ one; this day, this conversation, this inevitably embarrassing moment, which began with Narcissa's enveloping hug in the foyer, and was bound to end with Calista blushing furiously and wishing she'd done well enough in Transfiguration to be able to Vanish herself entirely, once and for all.

They made polite small talk for a few minutes — Calista recounted her experience meeting with the Head of the Potions Department at St. Mungo's, and Narcissa told Calista about the trio of tickets Lucius had gotten for the Quidditch World Cup, which somehow struck Calista as even _more_ boring than her aunt's usual descriptions of shoes and dress robes.

Still, she'd have gladly listened to Narcissa talk about shoes _or_ Quidditch for hours if it meant avoiding what she'd actually come to talk about.

"Now then, darling," her aunt said, lifting her teacup and her brow in one restrained gesture, "What have you come to ask me about sex?"

Calista spluttered, spitting a mouthful of tea back into her cup. Narcissa winced, and passed her a napkin, which Calista only clenched in her fist.

"I didn't say — I mean, how do you know that's what I wanted to talk about?"

Her aunt smirked. "You asked me four times to confirm that Lucius and Draco were going to be out."

"So? That doesn't mean I wanted to talk about _that_ — and this tea tastes awful, by the way, what's in it?"

"There's no need to be rude _or_ embarrassed," Narcissa said, "And it's _herbal_ tea, dear. With thistle and wild carrot seed."

Calista blinked. "Those — aren't those used to reduce fertility, or whatever?"

"Ah," Aunt Narcissa smiled, delighted. "So you _have_ been reading the books I gave you."

"Fine," Calista muttered, hunching her shoulders. She set her teacup back in its saucer, and clutched her napkin petulantly. "Yes, I've been reading them, and _yes_ , all right, that's what I came to ask you about."

"Calista, there's no need to be so… _churlish_ about this," her aunt said, a bit sternly, "It's all perfectly natural."

Calista took a breath, and tried to force her embarrassment out of her face. And to think, only days ago, she'd thought a job interview was going to be the hardest part of her summer. This was easily a hundred times more awkward.

"Fine," Calista said again, "So then — so what should I _do,_ exactly? To be — erm — safe?"

"Well," her aunt said delicately, "You can't just _start_ with intercourse, of course — you'll need to, ahem, prepare…"

Calista felt her jaw drop in horror. She shook her head, quickly. "That's not —"

It's all very individual, you know," Narcissa continued, "You'll have to experiment with your young man, to find out what you both like —"

"For Merlin's sake, _stop!_ " Calista howled, "I _know_ all that — I've read the books! I meant — erm — gods, this is _horrible_ , why did I even come?"

"Really, darling, let's try to be a bit more mature about this…"

"I _meant_ ," Calista said, blushing furiously, "What's the best protection? The potion? Your stupid tea? The spell?"

It was Narcissa's turn to be offended, now. She squared her shoulders, lifting her brow archly.

"Excuse me?" she said, nose curling up in distaste, "Did you say _the spell_?"

"Yeah," Calista said, "The spell. Gerald said he would —"

Narcissa snorted delicately. "Darling, a man will say _anything_ to get in your dress robes, but you can't trust them to actually follow through."

"I _do_ trust Gerald, you know, or we wouldn't even be having this abysmal conversation…"

"Men forget," Narcissa said firmly, "Or they lie, or they bungle the spell — no, Calista, I will _not_ allow any niece of mine to rely on _the spell_. For heaven's sake, child, you'll take the potion, of course."

"Which one, then? The… the Barrenating Brew, or the Contraceptive Concoction? Or… or should I just have this stuff?" She wrinkled her nose, unimpressed, at her still-full teacup. "The… herbal stuff?"

"Goodness no, Calista, the herbs in this tea only reduce your chances of conceiving, they don't eliminate them. You'll take the Contraceptive Concoction — the newer formula, the weekly one; it's easier on the stomach."

"Fine." Calista pressed her forehead into her hands briefly, and then rubbed her cheeks, as if she could wipe the colour off of them. She probably only succeeded in ruining her makeup. "So… So I just drink it once a week, then? When I'm… er, when I need it?"

"You'll drink it once a week, on the _same_ night every week, starting tonight —"

"I don't need it _yet_ —"

"You'll start it _tonight_ , darling," Narcissa said, in an authoritative tone that Calista had only ever heard her use with Draco, one that sent shivers down her spine and that she didn't _dare_ to question. "It takes two weeks to become fully effective, and it's better to be prepared sooner rather than too late; I have some to spare; I'll send you home with some, and then I'll give you the recipe I find works best — you'll make it yourself, I assume?"

"I guess so," Calista said, dubiously, "Though I can't imagine having to explain to Dad why I'm suddenly having so much milkweed delivered to the house. Maybe he won't notice —"

"I'm sure he'll pretend not to," Aunt Narcissa predicted wryly, "But if you'd rather, you can always purchase it; I've got a very reliable potioneer I can refer you to."

Calista blinked. " _Store-bought potions?_ Are you mad? Dad might _actually_ throw me out for that."

"Well, then," her aunt said loftily, "I suppose you'd better place a standing order for milkweed. Oh, and wild carrot seed; it _does_ make a nice tea if you have a little extra."

Calista wrinkled her nose, looking down at her teacup as if it had personally offended her. "I beg to differ."

"You, differ? Honestly, I expect no less," Narcissa said, softening the gentle barb with a small, sly smile. "Now, then; you'll need new clothes for your new job, of course —"

"What's wrong with all the ones I already have?"

"Darling, they're _last season_. We'll plan an outing, a proper day of shopping — oh, and we'll go to the Well-Coiffed Witch, of course —"

Calista stifled a groan, but evidently not fast enough to evade Narcissa's keen eye.

"Unless," her aunt said, "You'd prefer to continue the previous conversation?"

"No, that's — uh, shopping's fine," Calista said quickly. "Let's talk about that."

Her aunt smirked. Calista settled back into her chair, and listened politely while her aunt prattled on about pointed-toe shoes and eyelash curlers and whatever other torturous ministrations she planned to subject her to.

Her aunt's shopping monologue, much like Professor Binns' lectures in History of Magic, was difficult to pay close attention for very long. She found her mind wandering while her nearly-untouched tea gradually cooled in front of her, and she hoped fervently that while she was thinking about runes and nodding at the lulls in Narcissa's speech that she wouldn't accidentally agree to something horrendous, like a pedicure or — even worse — another sex talk.

Calista did love her aunt dearly, and sometimes they _did_ have interesting conversations, but on that day it was a relief when she was sent home, a couple of hours later, with nothing more than a knowing smile, a sealed sheet of parchment, and two tiny vials of a dull green potion — and of course, a plan to meet in London next week for the dreaded shopping trip, during which Calista sincerely hoped she would not be dragged into another lingerie shop full of horrible lacy things.

She did her best to pretend that she hadn't wondered, just for a moment, whether Gerald had an opinion on horrible lacy things.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

One Saturday — her _last_ Saturday living a life of relative of freedom from responsibility, since Narcissa's shopping trip had taken up the last one, and she was supposed to start her position at St. Mungo's on Monday, despite her misgivings — Calista woke to find that she had the Spinner's End home she shared with her father all to herself.

She shuffled into the kitchen, and frowned at the coffee pot on the counter. It was _empty_ , which wouldn't have been unusual if she was the first one to rise, but it was already well past nine, and a plate in the basin that still had crumbs and bits of sausage on it confirmed that wasn't the case. She frowned, and glanced around the cosy kitchen, looking for other signs that her father had come and gone.

She opened the icebox, and saw that they were out of sausages — which was fine, she didn't like them anyway — but they were also, once again, out of nearly everything _else,_ and she was nearly positive they'd had at least a couple of eggs and a half-stale muffin left, yesterday. She felt her stomach rumble impatiently, and she kept searching. She found a couple of slices of bread and a single, bruised apple and set them on the counter, and then she started on the most important thing — the _coffee_.

While the scent and sound of brewing coffee filled the little kitchen, Calista swept into the sitting room, intending to holler up the stairs in case her father _was_ home — she'd ask him if he wanted some coffee, even he _had_ eaten the last of their eggs — and then she noticed the torn-off bit of parchment on the coffee table, and a small pile of bronze and silver coins.

She lifted the note, scowling as she read the first sentence —

 _Calista,_

 _I've gone out to run some errands, and I expect to be gone for most of the day —_

"Seriously?" she groused, aloud, "I'm supposed to go visit Gerald today, and now I have to wait until you get home so I can let you know? You could have woken me before you left..."

She trailed off, as she registered the remainder of the note's contents:

 _Please leave a note for me here if you go out today. And pick up eggs and whatever else you think you'll want to eat the rest of the week. We're out of nearly everything, as I'm sure you've noticed by now. I'll leave some money._

— _S_

"You mean I can go out alone without answering a hundred questions first? Who are you and what have you done with my father?"

She inspected the note closely, but it _was_ his handwriting. Calista lifted her brow, and allowed herself a pleased little smirk. Evidently, graduating Hogwarts and becoming a productive member of society — as of Monday, at least — _did_ have its benefits.

She toasted and buttered the last two slices of bread and downed two mugs of coffee, and then she went back upstairs to shower and dress, in one of her favourite yellow tops and a pair of lightweight black trousers with large pockets for her wand and money, so she wouldn't need to bother with a cloak in the summer heat.

She took the money her father had left, and penned a quick note on the backside of his:

 _Dad -_

 _I'm going to Gerald's house. I'll be home by dinner and I'll stop at the market on my way home._

 _-C_

Truthfully, Calista had planned on asking her father if she could stay at Gerald's later — not least of all because he was almost certain to ask her stay for dinner and because he and his mother were both fantastic cooks, but eighteen years old or no, it was rare for Severus to give her so much freedom, and she didn't want to give him a reason to change his mind.

It was a quick, pleasant walk to her usual Apparition point, and an even shorter one from the point in South London to Gerald's home.

He must have been waiting for her; the door to his third-floor flat swung open almost as soon as her knuckles had touched it.

" _Mon colibri_ ," Gerald said, using his favoured nickname for her, from the French rune for _hummingbird_ — a protective rune, and one that he had admitted, once, to associating with her since long before they were even friends, let alone an item. "I've been looking forward to seeing you all week."

"I could say the same," Calista said, following him inside the small, cosy sitting room that always seemed so much brighter and more lived-in than the one at her home, "How's everything going at work?"

Gerald Boot, who had been a year ahead of Calista at Hogwarts, was a Runes Translation Specialist for the Ministry's Department of Runes and Symbols, and he'd been asked to work late every night during the last week to assist with the translation of a sheaf of mysterious documents that had been owled in from Albania. It was why she hadn't seen him in over a week; still, separation was nothing new to them. Last year, she'd still been at Hogwarts and they'd managed to stay close with letters, and owled gifts, and only a handful of opportunities to meet in-person.

"Slowly," Gerald admitted, "And painstakingly. Some of the documents seem important, but some end up translating to old fairy tales; and then, some of them are nothing but gibberish, as far we can tell. I'll be on this project for a while, I think."

"Well," Calista ventured, just as she caught sight of a petite, kind-faced woman entering from the doorway beyond, which Calista knew contained a small, cramped, and very cheerful dining room, "I'm glad you got today off, at least."

"Calista, hello," Gerald's mother, Tina Underwood said, as she came up beside her son. She smiled, quite warmly. "It's good to see you; not least of all because I expect you'll keep Gerry's nose out of his books for the afternoon, eh?"

Gerald coughed, cheeks turning pink. " _Mum_."

"Actually," Calista admitted, sheepishly, "We _were_ planning on doing some reading — There's a new Lovenworth out that neither of us have had a chance to look at yet…"

Gerald's mother chuckled. "Haven't you just finished school, Calista? I'd think you'd want to take a break from textbooks. Gerry's the same, of course; no wonder you two found each other."

"Erm, anyway," Gerald said hastily, before his mother could say anything else embarrassing about him, "The book — the Lovenworth — it's in my room."

Tina smiled knowingly. "Yes, go on, then. I won't keep you."

Calista followed Gerald to the smallish bedroom that he shared with his brother.

"I'm sorry," he said, flushing slightly as he led her to his side, which was as neat and pristine as she remembered it; two bookshelves were filled with titles arranged by subject — one with Muggle books and one with regular books — and the bed was neatly made. The other side of the room, however was a different story, and was the reason for Gerald's embarrassed apology. "I begged him to pick it up a bit before he went out to his friend Michael's house; he says he did."

Calista shrugged. "It's better than it was last time I was here, anyway."

That much was true; though the bed was unmade and clothes spilled out of half-open dresser drawers on the side of the room that belonged to his younger brother, Terry, the floor was at least clear.

"That's not saying much," Gerald said, going over to the first set of bookshelves on his side of the room; Calista recognised the new Lovenworth on the top. "I'm going to start looking for my own place, as soon as everything's sorted out with the courts. With _him_."

Gerald had a strained relationship with his father, Brandon Boot. When Gerald was younger, Brandon had been physically and emotionally abusive, and had even served time in Azkaban for the scars he had left on his son's body; not _enough_ time, as far as Calista was concerned. Dolores Umbridge had rejected a letter from Gerald's mother as suitable testimony, simply because his mother was a Muggle, and that had been the main factor in his receiving a lighter sentence. Since his release when Gerald was twelve, contact with his son had been strained, but Gerald had maintained it based on his father's promise to leave Terry alone as long as Gerald kept in touch. A few months ago, Calista had helped Gerald uncover that Brandon hadn't been keeping his end of the bargain; not only had he been in contact with Terry, but he'd also begun to set in motion a plot to gain physical custody of Terry in order to claim his sons' share of the Boot family wealth that had been placed in a trust for them.

Gerald had kept his contact with his father secret, in the hopes of sparing his mother and brother from having to deal with the man, but it had all come out when the plot was uncovered, and Gerald's mother had revealed the existence of a protective order Brandon had violated by contacting Gerald. They were in the midst, now, of a dispute in the Muggle courts to try and hold him accountable for doing so; whether a victory in the courts would keep Brandon, a wizard, at bay remained to be seen.

"Have you heard anything else?" Calista asked, with a small frown. Gerald shook his head.

"Not since the last time I wrote to you about it. Mum's friend Helen — the police officer, you remember — says it probably won't be settled until sometime in October, or even later."

"Let me know if you need me. For anything."

Gerald offered a small, grateful smile. "I'll need to testify at some point," he said, "If you can accompany me, I'd really appreciate just having you there."

"Of course," Calista said, nodding. "I'll be there; I promise."

" _Merci_ , _mon colibri_."

Calista ducked her head, hiding her expression under pretense of reaching for the book in his hands, and looking at the cover. Gerald's uncle, his mother's half-brother, lived in France, and had taught Gerald to speak and read French — a skill that he mainly used, as far as Calista could tell, to make her blush.

 _And I suppose_ , she added, internally, recalling a conversation they'd had the day she'd graduated from Hogwarts, _to disguise lists of forbidden spells._

It was strange; she knew Gerald very well — they'd been close friends for quite some time before admitting their mutually developing feelings for each other almost a year and a half ago — but it seemed like there were always new things to discover about him. That the former Head Boy and Ravenclaw Prefect had once harboured a streak of rebellion was one of her favourite _recent_ discoveries; she had a secret plan to draw a bit more of it out of him, if she could. She supposed it was the Slytherin in her, or perhaps just the _Snape_.

"In the interest of utmost honesty," Gerald said, sheepish once more, as he held the book out between them, "I should admit that I've already looked through it a bit."

Calista quirked a brow. "You checked the index, didn't you?" she accused.

"I did," Gerald admitted, and she bit her lower lip to keep her grin in check. It was a strange habit, but one they _both_ had, to check the index of a new text first, rather than the contents. It was one of her favourite things about him, as silly as it seemed. "And I admit, I was a little — no, I won't spoil it for you. Look for yourself, and let me know what impression you get."

Calista accepted the book, and opened the back cover, eyes skimming over the first page of the index. " _Ancient symbolism_ , _chapter four_ ," she murmured, " _Cyrillic predecessors, chapter two_ …"

She frowned, unconsciously perching on the only place in the room to sit — the edge of Gerald's bed. She turned the page, and kept skimming.

"Predictive patterns, celestial — sedimentary significance — it sounds like he's just rehashing everything from _Symbols of Stone and Star_."

Gerald perched next to her, and his sudden weight and closeness on the bed beside her made her realise belatedly where she'd sat; she'd only been in his room a couple of times, and she had never actually sat down. She felt a funny flutter in her chest, and was suddenly tempted to tear eyes away from the book, in favour of the young man beside her.

"That was my first impression, too," Gerald said, hovering his chin above her shoulder, to look at the pages with her. Her skin felt suddenly warm; she suppressed a tingle along her spine. Even now, after so long, the ghost of her old nemesis, the hair-twirling, blushing, hormone-driven _girly-girl_ that lived inside her, couldn't seem to help but surface when she was close to him. _Especially_ when he started speaking French, though of course she was still largely committed to pretending to dislike a lot of the cornier things he did. "I was tempted to start reading and see, but I _did_ promise to wait for you."

"You did promise," Calista agreed; she turned the page, simultaneously trying to place and to ignore a familiar, tantalising scent that seemed to be clouding her senses, all of a sudden. "Where… where should we start?"

Gerald shifted, so that he could see the book more clearly over her shoulder. It also brought them closer together; she could feel the warmth and solidness of him all along her left side.

"I'll let you decide," he said, quietly; she felt the tickle of his breath at the side of her neck, and a sudden, nearly irresistible urge to set the book aside and just start kissing him. She would have done it, but what if he didn't want to? The book had come out a week ago, and he had immediately offered to wait to read it until she could come over; what if _that_ was what he'd really been looking forward to? "Which chapter would you like to read first?"

Calista took a deep breath, an attempt to steady herself, but it didn't help much, because she could still smell that familiar mixture of scents —

"It's _Amortentia_ ," she said, identifying the scent; and then, realising she'd done so aloud, she felt her cheeks tingle with telltale warmth.

"Hm?" Gerald pulled back slightly; furrowing his brow, and she looked over at him. Even with — no, _especially_ with the inquisitive look on his face, he was _so damn cute_. She allowed her gaze to sweep over him properly, taking in his neat brown hair, the warm brown eyes behind a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles, the ubiquitous blue button-up Muggle shirt of the sort he'd taken almost exclusively to wearing since she'd admitted she liked them on him — and then she felt the heat from her cheeks spread into other places, as she realised the implication of the fact that he'd deliberately worn something he knew damn well she found him attractive in.

" _Amortentia_ ," she said again, slightly braver, "I made it in my second year — in my wardrobe at school, for Olivia's parents, or so she said — it wasn't _really_ for them, of course, she gave it to Colin Greengrass — but I've just realised that what I'm smelling right now is exactly what Amortentia smells like to me."

Gerald blinked. Several things seemed to occur to him at once. He settled for:

"You remember the smell that well from six years ago?'

"Erm. Not exactly. I made it for my N.E.W.T. exam too, but I was trying to show off by reminding you that I could make a sixth-year potion when I was twelve."

Gerald blinked again, and then he reached one hand up, tentatively; he set his fingers lightly at the base of her jaw. He seemed to be waiting for something: permission, perhaps, but that might have been Calista's wishful thinking.

"Show off?" He echoed quietly, "You really couldn't possibly impress me any more than you already have," and then, with a small quirk at the corners of his mouth: " _Mais bien sûr, si tu veux l'essayer de toute façon …_ "

"One of these days," she warned half-heartedly, "That's going to stop working…"

" _J'espère sincèrement non._ " Gerald moved his fingertips slightly, drawing them closer to the corner of her mouth. Calista shivered, and then:

"Maybe — maybe we can save the book for next time…"

As if he'd been waiting for her to say so, Gerald plucked the book lightly from her hands, closing the cover, and setting it down carefully on the bed, a good distance behind and away from them; then, he placed his other hand on her shoulder, and pulled her close, closing the distance between them —

" _Quid faciemus, pro lectio libri_?" she posed, smirking, in the instant before his lips touched hers. _What shall we do, instead of reading?_

She felt Gerald exhale, and it was only with concentrated effort that she refrained from finishing what he'd started; but _this_ , the clever flirtations in French and in Latin, were one of her favourite parts — and, judging from the rapidly rising colour in Gerald's cheeks, and the visible flutter of his pulse at the hollow of his throat, he felt the same way.

" _Nous pouvons… nous…_ " Gerald faltered, and Calista suppressed a grin of triumph. He wasn't often at a loss for words, and somehow, it struck her as even sweeter and more flattering than whatever pretty, practised phrase he would have said.

" _Je t'aime_ ," Gerald finally said, swallowing hard. "And I want to kiss you now, very badly."

" _Ad osculum mihi, mea dulcis noctus_ ," she teased, adding _her_ romantic nickname for him, a reference to his Patronus. _Then kiss me._

He did, quite eagerly; first her mouth, and then her jaw, along her neck — and then his fingers went lightly to her ear, tracing the outer edge and for the life of her, she could never figure out precisely _how_ he made that feel so nice, and so much more intimate than it should have, but he always did.

" _Te amo_ ," she heard herself blurt out, and this time it was Gerald's turn to grin, briefly, with triumph. He shifted even closer, wrapping one arm around her; if he leaned back, she'd land on top of him. She found herself suddenly wishing he would.

" _Mon beau colibri_ ," he murmured; and then, tantalisingly, he stopped the movement of his fingers, lifted them away from the shell of her ear.

" _Que veux-tu faire maintenant?_ " he asked, slyly, perfectly imitating her earlier tone, " _Au lieu de lire?_ " _What do you want to do now, instead of reading_?

Calista felt suddenly very warm, and she could _feel_ her heart pulsing at her throat in exactly the same way Gerald's was; but she was an extremely accomplished Occlumens for her age, and she managed to keep her expression in check; she felt the corners of her mouth flicker into a coy smirk. If this was going to be a competition — well, it was common knowledge that Slytherins _really_ didn't like to lose.

She touched his cheek, running her palm along his jaw and down his neck — when she reached his collar, she let her fingers work the top two buttons loose, and touched her fingertips against his collarbone while she worked the third with her other hand.

" _Je veux te toucher_ ," she said, very quietly, mirroring precisely an earlier conversation, from months ago — from when they had finally revealed their scars to each other, and each had promised that it didn't make a difference, that they still found the other _beau_ , or _belle_ , respectively.

Gerald's reaction, however, wasn't _quite_ what she'd been expecting. His flush deepened exponentially, and he dropped his eyes.

"Erm — that — about that," he managed, stuttering over a breath, "I — erm, I was talking to my Uncle Gérald, and — uh, it turns out that it's not really a _direct_ translation, like I thought I was saying."

Calista blinked, pausing her fingers' work. "It's not? What does it mean, then?"

"It's, ah — " Gerald licked his lips, nervously. "It's — still the same, except that there's a very — erm, well it's evidently understood as a very — uhm, _intimate_ thing to say…"

"Yeeees," Calista said slowly. Her fingers twitched, eager to return to their previous activity. "And?"

"And…" Gerald swallowed. He still looked uncertain; but she caught a flicker of something _else_ in his eyes — did he look, suddenly, _hopeful_? "Wait a minute, are you saying you already guessed that?"

"Well, it wasn't exactly a profound leap in logic, given the circumstances — are you saying you _didn't_ mean it that way?"

Gerald blinked rapidly; he was starting to look comically, pleasantly surprised, as if she were informing him that he'd just won the lottery.

"Erm." Gerald exhaled. "I… I'm not certain if there's a correct way to answer that question."

She felt a sudden upwelling of a completely different and unwelcome rush of heat, starting in her gut and finding its way to her cheeks, reddening them for the worse.

"Great," she muttered, embarrassed, pulling her hands away from him and into her own lap. "Now Ifeel like an idiot — I'm sorry —"

"Huh — No, no!" Gerald murmured urgently, and he reached for her hands, pulling her gently back towards him. "Please don't — I didn't mean…"

"I _know_ you didn't mean it like that," Calista hissed, scowling, "At least, _now_ I do. Obviously. I should — I think I should go."

" _Calista_ ," he said quietly, tightening his grip on her hands just slightly as she made to pull away, " _Mon cœur_ , please. I was just — I… I'm trying not to presume, I've been trying to be polite, but of _course_ I want — " He sucked in a breath, and then: " _Je veux te toucher, mon beau colibri; j'y pense, je pense à toi_ …"

She swallowed, and stopped trying to withdraw. "You… you do? I mean… like _that_?"

" _Yes_." His gaze swept over _her_ then, in a way that made her breath catch in her throat. "Obviously."

She exhaled, and nodded. The more pleasing warmth was creeping its way back through her veins, after all.

"Okay," she said quietly, after a moment, and then: "I've started taking the potion. Just… just so you know."

Gerald's eyes went briefly wide, and then — and then, he let go of her hands, carefully, and leaned close, reaching for her — gods, he was going to kiss her again, and _this time_ , she hoped he knew that he didn't have to be _so damn polite_ —

Too late, Calista registered the distant clatter of a door, and feet, and the chatter of voices — and then, a second later, the sounds from beyond the room were much less muffled, and she heard Gerald's little brother's voice, just as they sprang apart, a few seconds too late —

"This is my room, I share it with my swotty broth —"

"Terry!" Gerald scowled, instinctively turning as if to shield Calista from view of Terry and whatever friend he'd brought along, even though she was — apart from her flaming cheeks and whatever look undoubtedly occupied her eyes — entirely decent, "Didn't Mum tell you I'm _in_ here — get out!"

"Are you snogging your girlfriend in my room _again_? _You_ get out — "

"Terry!" Gerald's mother scolded, from somewhere just beyond the doorway, "I thought I told you to bring Michael _outside_ to play —"

"I was showing him my room!"

"Show him another time," Tina said firmly; she either convinced Terry or dragged him out, because he and his friend retreated; the door slammed a fraction of a second later, reverberating along the walls and causing both of them to start violently; Gerald recovered first.

"I'm so sorry," he moaned, evidently mortified, "He wasn't supposed to be home until later — I _really_ need to start looking for my own place…"

"Maybe we should have just gone to my house. Dad was out this morning."

"Perhaps — ah, perhaps we'll keep that in mind, for next time…"

"Yeah. Uhm, Gerald?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think I can borrow the Lovenworth?" she asked, "When you're done with it? Something tells me we're not actually going to get around to reading it together…"

Gerald grinned sheepishly, and reached behind him.

"Here," he said, holding it out, "You can read it first; it's really the least I can do, to apologise for my brother barging in on us _again_. And for — er — making you worry."

"That seems reasonable. Don't worry, I'll be careful with it."

Gerald spluttered and coughed, and Calista frowned, concerned, reaching uncertainly for his shoulder.

"Are you all right?"

"I — yes," Gerald said, recovering, "It's just — you have no idea — that was one of the first things I ever said to you, that first day that we really talked. We… you hated me, at first —"

"Hate's a strong word."

"You hated me," Gerald repeated, matter-of-factly, "Until I got you talking about Lovenworth — and then — it was awful, I'd been trying to figure out how to be your friend for _ages_ , and the first time you actually gave me the time of day and I offered to let you borrow my book, I had to go and blurt out ' _Be careful with the spine_ ' —"

Calista grinned. "I remember that."

"I was mortified, when I thought about it later," Gerald admitted, "I'm _still_ mortified."

"Oh, come on. It can't have been worse than having a dwarf read a love poem written about you by your little cousin's best friend to your entire Arithmancy class."

Gerald made a funny little snorting sound in a failed attempt to stifle his laughter.

"That was — er, that was a _fantastically bad_ poem, though I can't fault Goyle's muse selection." He smiled, hopefully, then. "Perhaps you'd prefer one of _my_ poems…?"

Calista scowled. "No," she said, "Absolutely not. I have boundaries, Gerald, and poetry is one of them."

"One day, I'll convince you to change your stance on that…"

It was Calista's turn to snort, then, in disbelief. "That'll be the day."

"Yes," Gerald said, fondly and quite seriously, "I expect it will."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

By the time Calista dragged herself out of Gerald's flat, Apparated back to Cokeworth, picked up groceries at the market, and hurried up the length of Spinner's End to the modified two-up two-down she shared with her father, it was well past six, and thus, well past the time she'd promised to be home.

She expected the front door to fly open as she approached; when it didn't, she wondered if Severus was so livid that he had gone out in search for her. It certainly didn't seem beyond the scope of things he would do; after all, he had tried to confine her to the castle, or to a particular room in the castle, on at least three separate occasions, all in the name of keeping her safe.

She hurried inside and locked the door behind her, setting the grocery bags down at her feet, and then she blinked in disbelief as she slowly realised the state of the room around her.

It was precisely the way she'd left it. The curtains were drawn against intense morning sun that no longer poured in through the panes; her quill and the note she'd penned with with were still in the same spot on the table; and, most surprisingly of all, no one swooped into the room to scold her for being out so late.

"Dad?" Calista called, uncertainly; her only reply was a plaintive _mew_ , as her grey cat, inaptly named Yellow, slunk out from underneath the armchair where he'd evidently been napping.

She checked the entirety of the flat — the small kitchen, dominated by a round, wooden table and chairs that were as familiar to her as her own name; the upstairs rooms, her father's spartan bedroom and the storage space by the attic stairs; she even verified that the door to the washroom was ajar, and called up the attic stairs, even though the attic space was her bedroom, and he never went up there.

Severus simply wasn't home; and he didn't appear in the time it took her to put the groceries away, or in the ensuing hour afterwards, while she grew steadily hungrier and simultaneously more anxious.

He didn't appear while she gave in to the growling in her stomach and made herself a sandwich, or when nerves made her queasy and caused her to toss the remaining half of it in the bin; he didn't appear while she fed her cat and went out to the yard to feed both of their owls, or while she washed the small collection of dishes that was in the basin, just to keep her hands busy.

When she _did_ finally hear the click of his key in the lock, and the murmured Charms as his wand tapped the door, it was an hour into her nervous pacing and almost nine o'clock.

Severus Snape strode into the the front room of the flat, looking — Calista took inventory immediately — unhurt and entirely unconcerned.

"Where the hell have you _been_?" Calista demanded, practically charging him, "It's almost nine o'clock, and I had no idea where you were — I've been thinking you went off after a bloody werewolf again —"

"Calista." Severus took his own brief inventory, ensuring that _she_ was unharmed, even if she was far from unconcerned. "Calm down; I left a note — didn't you see it?"

"Of course I saw it," she said, gesturing towards the table, where her note had taken its place, "But you didn't say — I mean, I was expecting you home before _this_ — you never said you'd be out all night — and you missed dinnertime!"

"I assumed you would be having dinner with Mr. Boot and his family," her father said, evenly, "Furthermore, I wasn't aware that I had a curfew."

"Your note only said you'd be gone _most of the day_ ," Calista said, accusingly.

"Yes, and as we still have, at my estimate, three hours left of it, it appears that my estimate was accurate —"

"And since when are you back to calling him 'Mr. Boot'?" Calista snarled, "It's _Gerald_ , and I purposely _didn't_ stay over there for dinner because I assumed you'd be waiting for me at home."

"Ah," her father said, after a moment. "It appears, then, that we both made incorrect assumptions. I suppose we should be clearer about such things in the future, to avoid unnecessary worry."

"Unnecessary?" Calista felt her brows go up. "Would it be unnecessary if it were the other way around, if _you_ were waiting for _me_ to come home?"

"I apologise, Calista," Severus said, still unnervingly calm, and even-toned. "Now, I would appreciate it if you'd let me take more than a single step into my own house."

Calista blinked. His behavior was suspiciously calm, his temper suspiciously even.

"Have you been Polyjuiced?" she asked, only half-kidding; Severus frowned.

"Don't you think that's a bit of an overreaction?"

"Maybe," Calista countered, shrewdly, "But as that's generally _your_ territory, and you're acting like you've just spent all day in a room full of kittens —"

Severus sneered, lip curling in disgust.

"Right," Calista amended, "You're acting like how a _normal_ person would be, if they'd just spent a day in a roomful of kittens — so I suppose it's like you spending the day growling at them and calling them 'sodding little hairballs' — and it all seems _suspiciously_ out of character. Where have you been all day, anyway?"

"Ah," her father said, and suddenly his trademark ill humour was firmly in place; he practically spat the his reply, she glowered at her, slipping past her into the kitchen.

" _That_ is absolutely none of your business."

Calista blinked, again. Well, it was certainly _him_ , all right.


	2. Firewhiskey

**Chapter 2: Firewhiskey**

Gerald Boot crossed the familiar river, picking his way carefully up the steep bank at the other side without even thinking; he'd followed Calista along this path so many times that he knew it like the back of her hand — he smiled slightly at that thought, shifting the bundle he was carrying; perhaps it sounded like a mistake to phrase it that way, but it wasn't. He'd held and kissed her hands so many times that he knew them better than his own.

He knew that she had a small scar beside her middle knuckle on her left hand — a bite from a mouse she'd failed to Transfigure once, she'd said — and he knew that the fingers of her right hand twitched when she was angry or afraid, the first sign of her instinct to reach for her wand. He knew, too, that her knuckles were often dry and rough in the winter, because she forgot her gloves more often than she remembered them, and he could always tell how long it had been since she'd seen her wealthy aunt based on whether she had nail polish on, and if so, how chipped it was.

He knew a few other things about her hands. He knew that on her left palm, both her heart line and her life line were broken and faint, and that she only had a fate line on her right hand, and not the left; personally, the more that Gerald learned about Divination, the less he tended to believe it, or at least to believe that it was an art that could be taught rather than an inherited gift, but even he had to admit that the implication of severe childhood trauma was uncanny, in Calista's case, though he wasn't stupid enough to bring it up, and risk sending her into one of her dark moods.

He knew, too — perhaps most importantly of all — that he loved those hands, broken life line and dry knuckles and tiny white scar and all. He loved holding them and pressing his lips to them, and most of all, he loved the way they touched _him_. He loved the soothing pressure of her palm against his cheek or his shoulder or his chest, and the way she always seemed to realise when he needed to feel it. He loved the feel of her fingers, tracing his mouth or his collarbone like they were entries in a particularly fascinating index — and if he said that he didn't imagine her fingers on him in that way every time he watched them drift down a printed page, it would be a spectacular lie.

Gerald fought back a flush, as he rounded the corner of her narrow street, and started up it; between his thoughts and he incredible July heat, he thought he might melt before he even reached her door. He shifted the weight of the sack in his arms again, and peered inside, giving the contents a cursory check; he hadn't been out in the heat long enough for anything to spoil, but even so, he thought the flowers might starting to wilt already, and that wouldn't do at all.

He set the sack down on the front steps of the home that Calista shared with her father, his former Potions professor, and glanced surreptitiously around. He didn't see any Muggles; he didn't see anyone. It was already a quiet neighborhood, and the heat seemed to be driving everyone that _did_ live here inside or away. He reached into his pocket for his wand, just as the door opened; the sack he'd propped against it nearly fell inward, and Gerald winced in anticipation, but it was caught — barely — by a very familiar pair of pale hands.

"I might have been watching for you through the window," Calista confessed, lifting the sack. She frowned, undoubtedly realising that the weight of it accounted for a whole lot more than just the array of pretty, colorful flowers spraying out of the top. "What's all this?"

Gerald sprang up the steps, and reached to take the sack from her, but she resisted, peering into it curiously.

"Carnations… that's easy enough, and bellflower," Calista mused, as he followed her inside, still reaching half-heartedly to take the bundle back, even though it was too late to surprise her now, "I don't think I know what this one's for, though…and this is _heavy_ , have you brought books underneath?"

He lifted the bouquet from the top of the bag, so she could see the rest of the contents better.

"No, I'm afraid not — you seem to have rather enough of _those_." He tapped his wand to the bouquet, muttering a quick charm that perked the flowers up a bit; they _had_ been starting to wilt, though he doubted she'd noticed.

Calista caught his eye and grinned. She glanced behind her, at the walls of the room, which were so laden with filled bookshelves that they might as well have been _made_ of books. He knew that her own bedroom upstairs held nearly as many again. "I guess I do have a few."

Gerald shifted the flowers to one arm, and reached out for the bag again, taking it from her this time. He carried both through the dim sitting room and into the smaller, brighter kitchen beyond.

"I brought something that you _don't_ ever seem to have enough of," Gerald said, over his shoulder, as he set the sack on the counter, "At least not whenever I check your cupboards; I brought food."

"We have food," Calista said, a bit defensively, following him into the kitchen. "I just went to the market myself. We have — we have bread, and pumpkin juice, and coffee, and probably at least three or four eggs left."

"What exactly would you make with that?"

Calista frowned slightly. "Toast," she said, "And — and eggs."

Gerald chuckled. "Believe it or not," he said wryly, "There's supposed to be a bit more than just _eggs_ in… well, in eggs. Here, these are for you, as you've undoubtedly already surmised —" he handed the bouquet over neatly, "And as for the _rest_ of what I've brought, I've got a new recipe I want to try — can I put these things away in here for now?"

Calista accepted the flowers and slipped past him to open one of the cupboard doors, and Gerald discovered, to his dismay, that she hadn't been joking; they really had nothing in the entire kitchen but a half-empty jug of pumpkin juice, a partial loaf of bread, and a trio of eggs. He put away most of the groceries he'd bought, leaving out the wrapped bundle of meat and several glass vials of seasoning, some newly bought and some that he'd borrowed from home.

"Do you have a baking dish?" Gerald asked, opening the cupboard where he knew their cookware was kept; at first glance, he saw only a few old, dented pots and pans, and then — ah, there it was. He thought he'd used it here, once before. He drew it out, just as he felt Calista's presence at his shoulder.

"A what?"

"This," Gerald said, setting the glass dish carefully down on the countertop. "I'm going to start marinating the steaks now, and this way I can just toss it in the oven when it's been long enough — mmm, _mon colibri, ton parfum me distrait_ …"

He unwrapped the steaks and placed them in the glass dish, and even after he uncapped the spices he'd brought, they couldn't quite mask the scent of her behind him; the one that made him want to reach for those hands, and bury his nose in her soft black hair —

"I'm not wearing that much," she said, and Gerald felt his heart skip a couple of beats before he realised that she was still talking about her perfume. He even managed not to drop the entire vial of minced garlic he was holding, as she added: "It must be the flowers."

It wasn't the flowers; he knew that, just as surely as he knew _that scent_. He had never actually made Amortentia, but he was reasonably confident that if he did, it would smell just like this, just like _her_ — apple blossom, and fluxweed and sage, and something else, something that was a bit like the tantalising scent that came from a freshly cracked book spine and always reminded him of that first time they'd kissed, in the Restricted Section —

 _Don't lie_ , the little voice in his head came, _It reminds you of plenty of times before_ that _; the library patrols, the Antidotes lessons, the Dueling Club, that time in Ravenclaw Tower when she came so close and you wondered what it would be like to kiss her._ Evidently, he hadn't been as adept at hiding his feelings as he'd hoped, because Amelia had noticed and made a crack, and Calista had moved away as quickly as if he'd suddenly become an offended hippogriff.

He schooled his expression before he remembered that he didn't _have_ to anymore. He put the seasoned steaks away for later, washed his hands, and turned to face her, allowing himself the smile that automatically slipped over his features when he saw her.

She was still inspecting the bouquet, murmuring identifications, but she was stuck on one, a bright red flower that looked something like a cross between a zinnia and a rose.

"Ah," Gerald said, "I thought that one might trick you — it's not native to this area at all, they've got to grow it in a greenhouse; it's a camellia, from Japan."

She looked up, dark eyes wide with curiosity. "What does it mean?"

"It means —" Gerald paused, and glanced through the kitchen doorway; there hadn't been any sign that anyone besides the two of them were there, but still. "Erm — your father isn't home, is he?"

"Wow," Calista said, brow lifting crookedly, "That's a very specific interpretation."

Gerald sputtered, feeling his face heat; he narrowed his eyes, and caught a particular gleam in hers, and the ghost of a grin beneath. Damn it, she was teasing him, and she'd succeeded, yet again, in getting the best of him.

"I — I —" He swallowed. He had really only one recourse, in situations like this, and it seemed a perfect time to use it; provided, of course, that her father really _wasn't_ home.

"He's not home," Calista confirmed, as if she'd read his mind — it was _so_ uncanny in fact, that if he didn't trust her not to, he might've wondered if she _had_ — "He didn't say when he was coming back, but he's been staying out pretty late recently, so I wouldn't be surprised if it weren't for quite a while."

Gerald stepped closer, and took a steadying breath; he caught her perfume again, but in this instance, it was a helpful distraction. It heightened his sense of romance, and helped him find the right words.

" _Si tu avais fait tes devoirs, mon beau colibri,_ " he said, in the quiet voice that he'd found most successful at making her blush; he spoke slowly, as he always tried to when he spoke to her in French, so that she could translate as he went. He could see the telltale wrinkle in her brow, the glimmer in her eyes, that told him she was working it out — his heart fluttered briefly, and he almost forgot the rest of his words. He wondered if she had _any_ idea how attractive that look was on her, if perhaps she even did it on purpose; it was half the reason he always enjoyed this so much.

"What homework?" she muttered, and Gerald felt himself smile. She _was_ catching on remarkably quick; perhaps he'd need to find a new language to flirt in, soon.

" _Si tu avais fait tes devoirs,_ " he murmured again, getting himself back on track — after all, he wasn't a native speaker himself, and still had some trouble on occasion, as he'd had to embarrassingly admit, that day a few weeks ago in his bedroom, " _Tu saurais que la camélia rouge symbolise le désir passionné…_ "

"Oh — I…" Calista swallowed; he willed the familiar pink to rise in her cheeks, but she was getting better at _that_ , too. Instead of blushing, she quirked a sly smile. "I must have missed that assignment. Thanks for filling me in."

Damn; she was good. Of course, as he'd warned her — and as he suspected very deeply that she was counting on — he took her resistance to his romantic overtures, _especially_ the corniest ones, as a challenge.

" _Bien sûr, mon cœur._ " He reached for her hands, wrapped around the bundled stems; he was tempted to pluck the flowers from her hands, to set them aside and just start kissing her — or at least, one particular part of his anatomy was tempted in that direction — but it was _this_ , the teasing and the playful exchanges and the romantic words that he returned to, over and over again, when he missed her, and he suspected it was the same for her. Moreover, _anyone_ could simply kiss her and later be forgotten; that idiot Flint had proven that; but _this_ had set him apart, he was certain, from that first attempt, when he'd kissed her hand outside of the door to her father's quarters at Hogwarts, and wished her sweet dreams in French, and her eyes and her heart had lit up.

He lowered the bouquet instead, and lifted one hand up, an imitation of an idle thought, fingering a vibrant, multicoloured bloom. " _Celui-ci, ma chérie? Sais-tu ce que cela symbolise?_ " _Do you know what this one symbolises?_

"The tulip?" Calista said, "It's for 'love', isn't it?"

" _C'est une bonne conjecture,_ " he agreed, shifting even closer; he placed himself carefully, so that his mouth would be near enough to her ear for her to feel his breath, when he spoke again. It had been a delightful discovery when he'd realised how sensitive the rounded edge of her ear was. " _Mais_ _ç_ _'_ _est incorrect._ "

Predictably, Calista exhaled, something that was awfully close to the sort of sigh he was going for; he stifled a grin. The ear never failed; he was _so_ glad he'd figured it out quite some time ago, though he was careful not to overuse it.

"Erm — what —" She took in a breath, and he saw her eyes dart quickly away and back, and then she went for _his_ weakness. " _Quid enim guratur tum, mea dulcis noctua?_ " _Then what does it symbolise, my sweet owl?_

" _C'est de la triche, mon colibri multilingue,_ " Gerald managed; of course it _had_ to be Latin, the language he most associated with scholars — and all right, _fine_ , he had a type, as that stupid Chocolate Frog card he'd adored when he was small had thoroughly proven, and Calista Snape — with her love of books and research, and her curiosity, and her undeniably brilliant mind — was _it_. And _that_ , all of that — even the long black hair and the way she flipped to the index first, always — was only the half of it.

"Maybe it is cheating," Calista agreed, slyly, "But you're no better; I got your last owl."

Damn it; he knew what was coming, and she had him there. But how _else_ was he meant to express the _other_ half of it, the way they understood each other's shadows, the way they seemed to be able to shine for each other, even in utter darkness? _Deux étoiles brillantes,_ indeed.

"What have I told you about verse?" she pressed, when he stayed silent.

"Erm —" Gerald felt _himself_ start to flush, and _that_ wasn't fair. Hastily, he unwrapped one of her hands from the base of the bouquet, and lifted it to his lips; he kissed her fingers softly, centering himself, and then met her gaze again, recovering neatly. " _Ne change pas de sujet. Nous parlions de la tulipe._ "

She lifted her brow again, still looking remarkably unimpressed. Well; so much for not overusing his trick. He'd nearly forgotten how stubborn she could be about poetry; this called for desperate measures. He released her hand, and lifted his own fingers higher, brushing them very lightly along the edge of her ear.

She inhaled sharply, and Gerald leaned in, confident at last that victory was near.

" _Variegated_ tulips," he informed her quietly, "Might as well have been cultivated just for you; _El_ _les symbolisent de beaux yeux._ "

And then, _at last_ , her cheeks filled with colour, and she lifted those beautiful dark eyes up to his, and one of them — he had no recollection which of them it had been — tossed the flowers aside onto the table, and their lips met eagerly.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Hours later — after they'd migrated to the sitting room's sofa, and Calista had found out definitively that Gerald did _not_ object to horrible lacy things; after they'd kissed, and explored, and reached a place where they agreed to stop, for now, and had actually read a few chapters of the Lovenworth — Calista felt herself getting hungry,and they _both_ heard it.

"I suppose that's my cue," Gerald teased, while Calista tried and failed to pretend that the sound had somehow come from the sofa, and not from her stomach.

He shifted, marking the page they were on with his finger, while he stretched down to where her head rested on his shoulder, and kissed her hairline almost idly. "Are you going to keep reading, or will you keep me company?"

The kiss was soft, and sweet, and nice in an entirely different way than his earlier, more passionate kisses had been, and it offered Calista a light rush of relief she hadn't realised she'd been waiting for; it was nice to have confirmation that even though they'd gone a bit further physically that day than they had before, it didn't mean their earlier, sweeter gestures of affection would be left behind. It made her grin.

"I don't see how those two things are mutually exclusive," Calista said, easing her weight off of his side, and stretching, "But I'll keep you company, _bien sȗr._ "

"Your pronunciation —" Gerald started, getting up off the sofa, still holding their place in the book.

"Is terrible," Calista interrupted, "I know."

"Actually, I was going to say it's getting better; do you have a bookmark?"

"It is? I don't practise much — and seriously, do _I_ have a bookmark?"

Calista grabbed her wand off the coffee table and crossed the room, to what appeared to be a section of the bookshelf. She tapped her wand to it, and it flew open, revealing a drawer and another shelf; the shelf held a bottle of wine and an assortment of long-stemmed glasses.

"Huh," Calista mused, "That's new. Anyway — "

She opened the drawer, and gestured towards it; it was filled with all manner of quills, half-empty ink bottles and, of course, bookmarks. "Take your pick, from the finest — or at least the _largest_ — bookmark collection in all of Greater Manchester."

Gerald chuckled, and selected one from the top of the drawer, marking their page and setting the book down on the coffee table. "I'm certain it _is_ the finest — or at least, it has the finest proprietress."

"Seriously?" Calista asked again, following him into the kitchen, "Do you _ever_ turn the charm off, even for a moment?"

"Do you want me to?"

"Actually — not particularly, no."

"Good," Gerald said, opening the cupboard and the icebox, and beginning to remove all of the things he'd placed there earlier in the day, "As long as that's settled, _mon amour_."

Calista felt herself smile; it was getting more and more difficult to pretend to despise romance, at least when it came to Gerald. Of course, that didn't mean she'd stop trying.

She watched him light the stove and fill pots with water; he arranged his ingredients neatly in lines, as if he were making a potion. It was that and one other thing — the fact that he had started chopping the carrots with his wand, rather than a knife, without saying a word — that caused a rush of warmth and affection that made utterly unexpected words come out of her mouth.

"Can you teach me how to cook?"

She expected shock; _she_ was shocked — but then, she realised that he didn't know she'd once vowed never to cook, when she was much younger. She hadn't told him about that, or about any of the other things she was never supposed to do — kiss a boy, share her bedroom, get married, have children. _One_ of those things had already happened, and another was about to — the rest of it, though… she meant the rest of it, for certain.

"Of course," Gerald said easily, motioning her over, "Here, you finish chopping the carrots — this part's easy, it's as if you were cutting any sort of root for a potion — and I'll explain the marinade."

It was a complicated recipe, which he seemed to have memorised, or else he simply knew which things should be added in which proportions; he was a good instructor though, too, and Calista realised very quickly why he had been a favourite with the younger students, as a peer tutor.

The little kitchen quickly grew quite hot, as the setting sun began to pour in the back windows, and the pots on the stove steamed and bubbled; before long, Calista had undone the top few buttons on her blouse and pulled her hair up off her neck, and Gerald had removed his button-up shirt entirely, to continue cooking in the thin undershirt he'd worn beneath it; Calista, of course, promptly dropped an entire potato into the pot of boiling water when that happened.

"Oops," she muttered, as Gerald fished it out with a ladle.

"Erm, yes, we generally would want to chop these first —" he teased; then, he half-turned, ostensibly to show her that he'd successfully rescued the potato, but he stopped, suddenly, eyes darting down to her neckline. His cheeks were already flushed from the heat, but she had a feeling they would have been red, either way; the poor potato rolled onto the floor with a sudden thump, as the ladle went limp in his hand.

"Oops," Gerald muttered, as Calista bent down with the intention of picking up the abused potato —

"No!" Gerald said quickly; she looked up, questioningly. "Don't, it's — it went in the boiling water, it's probably…" he swallowed, eyes falling to her neckline again, "Uh… hot. It's hot."

Calista laughed; she couldn't help it. And then, she grabbed a tea towel off the front of a drawer, and used it to pick up the potato, setting both on the countertop as she rose.

"Is it?" she teased; she plucked the ladle from his hand, and set that down, too. "We are still talking about the potato, right?"

"Erm," Gerald said, intelligently. "I — uh — oh, _Merlin's blood_ , the water!"

There was a sudden hiss from the stove, as the pot of unattended water began to boil over — they both scrambled then, Gerald shifting the pot away from the burner and attempting to relight it, and Calista reaching for the tea towel, to mop up whatever had spilled onto the floor below.

It was then — of _course_ it was then — that the front door of the flat shuddered closed, and Severus appeared in the kitchen doorway seconds behind the sound.

Instinctively, Calista took a quick survey of the room — and her heart sank. Gerald's shirt hung discarded on the back of a chair, while hers was now soaking wet in addition to having several buttons undone — his glasses were fogged from the steam coming off the stove, and Calista was crouched on the floor by his feet —

She scrambled up, practically brandishing the wet tea towel at the same that she fumbled with her top, pulling the buttoned portion up higher, and nearly untucking it from her trousers in the process.

"Hi, Dad. It's — er — not what you think, we're — cooking, just cooking. Gerald's showing me how…" her eyes darted around the room, looking for something, anything, innocuous that she could distract him with, while she buttoned her blouse up the rest of the way.

"Er," she said, snatching up the blasted instigating potato from the counter, and brandishing it innocently, "Would you like a potato?"

Severus' jaw twitched. His eyes flashed.

"No. Calista, may I have a word?" It wasn't really a question.

"I'm certain you're about to have several," she muttered; Severus merely quirked a brow, and then he jerked his head towards the sitting room, and disappeared into it.

Calista muttered a curse word as she attempted to fix her buttons; and then, mercifully, Gerald's fingers reached for them, suddenly remarkably deft, and fastened them properly, all the way up to her neck.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, "I hope I haven't gotten you in trouble; do you want me to come with you?"

She shook her head. "I think that would just make it worse — anyway, I _did_ tell him yesterday that you were probably coming over - and he's never home this early, lately…"

"Perhaps he is tonight _because_ I was coming over?" Gerald suggested, and Calista frowned.

"Yeah," she admitted; it did seem likely. "Probably."

"Calista." Severus' voice floated in, impatiently, from the room beyond. Gerald frowned sympathetically; Calista took a fortifying breath, squared her shoulders, and went in.

He had lit the lamp, and opened the front window; the heat had spread into the sitting room, but in comparison to the stuffy, humid kitchen, even the too-warm evening breeze drifting in from outside was welcome.

"I really wasn't — I mean, we really were just cooking," Calista said, quickly, gaze flickering to the sofa, praying internally that she hadn't accidentally left some article of clothing laying out on it; mercifully, the room was perfectly neat, except for the half-finished book on the table.

"Then I don't want to hear another word about it," Severus said grimly, as he paced the room; she noticed that he stopped at the section of shelf with the hidden drawer; evidently, she hadn't closed it all the way earlier — it hung ajar.

"I was looking for a bookmark, earlier," she said, before he had a chance to ask, "For the Lovenworth — I mustn't have shut it properly, I'm sorry —"

He clicked it shut, without checking the contents; for a moment, he simply stood there, facing away from her; and then, at last, he turned. His gaze fixed somewhere over her shoulder, on the sofa or perhaps the window behind it.

"A bookmark," Severus said, finally. He blinked, and repeated himself, this time with a minor upwards inflection. "A bookmark?"

"Yeees… that's what I said."

"I see; so you were _studying_ , today, you and — and Mr. Boot?"

 _Among other things_ , she thought; but all she said was, "Yes, that's right. Gerald and I were studying. And then we were cooking."

"I see," he said again, and then —

"It's perfectly natural, of course, for you to want to — _study_ ," he said, again with the strange inflection.

"Erm — what are you —"

He interrupted, holding up a hand for silence. She obeyed.

"Adults — adults do _study_ ," he said, and Calista wondered for an instant if he had gone mad, or if perhaps, finally, after all of her facetious speculation, he _had_ been Polyjuiced. "I understand that, Calista; and I understand, from Narcissa, that you are prepared — that you have everything you need to _study_ safely?"

"What the _hell_ — oh!" Calista nearly fell over, as the implication of what he was _really_ asking finally hit her. She felt her face grow furiously red, or perhaps it had gone pale — yes, it was probably that, because she suddenly felt as if all of her blood was in her feet, weighing her down. She wanted to disappear through the floorboards, but instead, she made herself say, as calmly as she could:

"Erm — I mean, I'm not really in the mood to study just _yet_ , but if I was — yes, I have everything I'd need to… ah, to study safely."

"Good," Severus said, in the same grim tone that rather implied the news was anything but. "In that case, there's just one other thing…"

"There is?" It had better not be about the milkweed; she made herself wake up well before the post came, on the days when she was expecting it, _just_ so she could avoid any potential awkward conversations like this one. Maybe she should have had it shipped to one of her aunts' houses, instead; but it was a bit late for that thought, now.

"Yes; I think it would be best if you and Mr. — Gerald — _studied_ in your room, from now on," Severus said stiffly, "As I'm sure it would be — ah, quieter…"

"Right," Calista said, quickly, "Because, uh — you wouldn't want to interrupt — _studying_ …"

"Precisely," Severus said, looking immensely relieved that she understood."Now, if that's setted —"

"It's settled," Calista agreed, hastily, "Perfectly settled; now I should go back to helping — cooking, really — do you want some, when it's done? I think there's enough."

Severus blinked. "I — no, actually, I think I'll go down to the fish and chips shop; somehow, I don't think I want anything to do with that blasted potato."

Calista practically choked on a burst of laughter. "It's nothing _bad_ ," she said, "It just fell — you know what, nevermind. I'm going… I'm going back in the kitchen, to help Gerald finish cooking, now."

He jerked his head in another nod, and Calista retreated back to the kitchen, where Gerald had wisely donned his button-up shirt again and was nearly finished cooking, from the smell of things.

Severus did end up joining them at the table, even though he'd procured his own dinner; they'd opened all the windows and Calista had performed a Displacement Charm that helped to rid the humid air and cool the room, and they managed to have a fairly companionable dinner, despite everything.

Severus had gone back out to the sitting room, after they ate, and Calista stayed behind to help Gerald clean up; under cover of clanking dishes and running water, she murmured the gist of the conversation she and her father had had in the sitting room; Gerald looked torn between mortification and amusement, which was almost precisely how _she_ felt about it, after the fact, and by the time they were finished, they were both fighting to keep straight faces.

She went with him when he left, letting her father know that she was walking him back as far as the Apparition point across the river; once they'd reached it, Gerald offered a hesitant, coy smile.

"So," he said, "Same time next week, or would you rather give my house a try again, instead?"

"Oh," Calista said, shaking her head, "I forgot to tell you — I can't, next Saturday. I'm supposed to be visiting my aunt and my cousin — the _other_ ones, my Aunt Andromeda and my cousin Tonks — you remember her from Hogwarts, right?"

Gerald nodded. "I do; and from your graduation, of course. Her mother — your aunt — she seemed very nice."

"Yeah. I'm… trying to see more of them, lately. I went over a couple of nights after work last week, but I guess Aunt Andromeda and Ted — that's her husband, I suppose he's my uncle, but I've only met him twice so that still sounds strange to me — anyway, I guess they're going to some kind of theatre production or something, after dinner, and Tonks wants me to stay over. I expect she's going to insist that I try her favourite firewhiskey, she's been going on about it for ages — I started having a bit of wine with dinner when I'm over Aunt Narcissa's to practice, just so I won't spit it back out or something and embarrass myself."

Gerald chuckled. "I don't think they're really very comparable — but I'm not certain, of course. Just… be careful, all right? There was a seventh year a while back who got very sick from drinking too much firewhiskey in Hogsmeade —"

"Oh," Calista said, "Yeah. That was Kim Avery; I was with her, part of the time. It wasn't pretty. I'm not planning on emulating her."

Gerald nodded, evidently satisfied; and then, _of course_ , he reached for her hand, and placed a light, parting kiss against her fingers.

"Owl me when you can, then, _mon colibri_ ; _mon cœur t'appartient à jamais._ "

"I will — and I'll probably be free on Sunday, in the afternoon — there's just one thing I need you to promise, in the meantime."

" _Tout ce que tu veux, mon amour._ Anything."

"Don't send any more poetry; even if it's in French, I _will_ know."

Gerald grinned sheepishly. " _Je suis désolée, ma mȗre des bois_ _;_ _la prochaine fois, je ne serai pas si sournois_."

He stepped back into the shadows, and lifted his wand, as Calista worked the words out silently, trying to translate — and then —

"Hey!" she huffed, at the empty air left behind after the _pop_ of his timely Disapparition, "That was _entirely unfair!_ "

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

By Wednesday afternoon, Calista reckoned she'd worked about six weeks in the last two and half days; by her reckoning, by the time Friday came around, it was bound to be practically Christmas.

"Merlin's balls," Amelia Slater said, tossing a thick hank of reddish-brown hair over her shoulder, as Calista took the seat across from her in the busy, noisy cafeteria, "You look like you've just sat the History of Magic N.E.W.T. all over again."

Calista rolled her eyes, sliding her lunch tray onto the table. "I feel like it, too. I can't believe it's only Wednesday."

"You're telling me," Amelia muttered, "If someone doesn't find the cure for that mucked-up Babbling Curse in 403, I'm going to go spare."

By a stroke of extremely good fortune — or good planning, perhaps — Calista's best friend Amelia had accepted a six-month Healer's Apprenticeship at St. Mungo's, which meant that, at least on the days when both of them could spare the time to take a lunch break, they could meet in the hospital's bustling cafeteria. She had been assigned to the fourth level, assisting with reversal of accidental spell damage, and she had already accumulated a multitude of bizarre stories in the month she'd been up there.

"At least you get to see different people once in awhile," Calista said glumly, "I'm down in the dungeons again, with Little Miss Halfwit and the most miserable group of people you can imagine. Even the bloody _portrait_ guarding the corridor hates me."

"Can't you come in through the back entrance? Most departments have one, I heard."

"Yeah. You know where ours is? A bloody petrol station toilet."

Amelia shuddered.

"Do you know what a petrol station is?" Calista went on, "Because I didn't, until I had to go to one — "

"How could you not know what petrol is? Honestly, do they teach you people _anything_ before you start at Hogwarts?"

Calista raised a brow. "Says the girl who tried to _eat_ Floo powder the first time she encountered it."

"I told you, that was — Percy's little areshole brothers told me that's what you were supposed to do —"

"How could you not have used it until you were fifteen, anyway? It's mad."

"Yeah, well," Amelia lifted her chin. "At least I'm not afraid of _pens_."

"I'm not afraid. It's a healthy mistrust."

Amelia snorted. "Whatever. So have they let you go over to the Charms Committee yet?"

Calista scowled, and shook her head. "No; and there's no good reason for it, Princess Astra just knows I want it, so she's holding off on signing the release. You know, the other day, she said something about maybe they should send Kyle instead — what good would that do? They don't _want_ Kyle, they don't really need any potions made, but of course I'm not supposed to admit that part, or she'll never let me go."

"Kyle?" Amelia's mouth flickered into a sly grin. "Is he the cute one?"

"He's the self-absorbed _areshole_ one, is what he is — and anyway, I thought you were into girls, aren't you happy with Endria?"

"I'm not tied to a specific gender. I like to keep my options open," Amelia said loftily, "And it's not a crime to _look_ , you know."

"I don't know, I think I'd be pretty cross if Gerald were eyeing some other girl at work all day." She frowned. "Do you think there _are_ pretty girls in the Runes office? Besides Mira, I mean. I wonder if I can find out."

"Well, don't ask Gerry; he'd be the last to realise it. Seriously, you've got _nothing_ to worry about — the only way he'd look at another woman is if she taped pages out of an ancient runes book all over herself, and even _then_ I think he might just scold her for ruining the binding —"

She stopped, and grinned at her own joke. "I'm hilarious, by the way, I hope you properly appreciate that. Are you going to eat that biscuit?"

Calista tossed the biscuit over carelessly. "I guess you're right. It's not like he'd have time to notice anyone else anyway, between how busy he is at work and the time he dedicates to trying to sneak verse into his letters. Speaking of which, I've _got_ to get him to stop that, it's making me mad. Have I mentioned that I _hate_ poetry?"

"Trust me, if that's the biggest relationship worry you have, then you're in good shape. I _wish_ all I had to worry about was Endria writing poems — not that she's any good at it, mind you, she tried once and it was rubbish — 'course I still ended up eating —"

" _Amelia_! Merlin's blood, we're at _work_ —"

"What?" Amelia blinked innocently, "I was talking about the poem. Ate it up, didn't I?"

"Eugh. I _don't_ believe you. Anyway, what kind of 'relationship problems' _do_ you have, then? I thought everything was going well."

Amelia shrugged. "I guess it is, mostly. It's just… you know, _things_. Things you don't realise until you spend a lot of time with someone. I told you she got her own flat, right?"

Calista nodded.

"Well, I go over at the weekends a lot, and it's just — I don't know, it's like we're always in each other's way. Like I'm constantly annoying her, and vice-versa. We argue over the stupidest things, and it's ridiculous, but I'm stubborn and I can't just _let her win._ Like — like, okay, last weekend, she was cross with me because I left a bunch of dishes in the sink and her mum was coming over, but I didn't _know_ her mum was coming over, she never told me, and I'm sitting there practically starkers when the knock comes — but she swears she told me, and I never listen, and it's all my fault." Amelia rolled her eyes. "It's stuff like that. _All_ the time."

"Erm." Calista frowned. "Yeah, I guess I can't relate to that; Gerald I get along really well." _Except when I have a nightmare, or a secret, and I push him away._ She pushed the thought away, too; it wasn't happening as often, lately… but then again, wasn't she still holding him at a distance, with _some_ things?

She hadn't told him about any of the things she'd resolved to, weeks ago; the other spell that had come into her head, the night she'd hit were-Remus with a Freezing Charm, or the rat that she had killed practising it; the hours spent, before that, earnestly casting the counter-curse, while whatever innocent creature her father had procured threatened to bleed out at her feet.

She hadn't told him, either, of the strangeness of the black dog's appearance on the night she'd finally regained her Patronus, the way it had seemed, impossibly, to communicate with her — the way that she'd jolted awake in the night a few times since, horrified by visions of the dog being torn apart by the wolf — even though she _knew_ that hadn't happened — and, even stranger, the nightmare she'd had just the other night, where both she and the dog had been set upon by dementors. She could still feel the cold, dry hands creeping around her neck, could still hear the dog's anguished yelps, and she'd actually woken up with tears on her cheeks, wondering why in the _hell_ she was so concerned about a dog that she may well have hallucinated, for all the sense its presence, that night, had made.

How _could_ she tell him any of that — how could she tell _anyone_? The tale made her sound mad.

"You get along with Gerry _now_ ," Amelia said, startling her out of her dark reverie, "Because you're not living together. Trust me, it's completely different, then. It's only a couple nights a week and I already hate it. It was much more fun when I was just going over for sex — really, you're going to let me get away with that one? Are you all right?"

"Huh? Oh — Amelia, don't say that."

Amelia grinned. "That's better. Anyway, I should be getting back — reckon they've got that Babbling Curse under control by now. If they don't I'm skiving off early; I don't get paid enough for this rubbish. See you later, yeah?"

"Mmm. Yeah. I suppose I might as well be getting back to the Dungeon of Doom now, anyway. Maybe I'll have gotten lucky, and Kyle and Astra will have finished each other off."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

"So you're still in contact with them, then?" Ted Tonks asked, brow raised in mild surprise, as he floated a steaming serving dish aloft over the table, "Here you are dear, have some more rice, there's plenty — easy, it's hot."

Calista carefully scooped out a portion of rice, avoiding the dish's hot surface; then, with a flick of her wand, she sent it floating further down the table, towards her aunt.

"Thanks. Yeah, I see them all the time; Aunt Narcissa likes me to come over for dinner at least once a week, especially now, while it's summer, and Draco's home."

"What do they make of the fact that you're over _here_ nearly as often, these days?" Ted asked.

"Erm — well, they don't know," Calista admitted, "It… seems easier that way."

"Ah. Of course." Ted frowned, flicking a small, sad glance at his wife.

Calista felt a spark of guilt; and then, as if she'd sensed it, Andromeda leaned over the table, and caught Calista's eye.

"It's all right, Calista. I assumed as much, anyway."

"I could…" Calista started, and then stopped. She could _what_? She knew damn well that to Narcissa, and to Lucius, what she was doing amounted to betraying the family; even if she had the courage to tell them, she was certain her father would forbid it.

"No," Andromeda said firmly, "You can't do anything; and I don't want you to try. I made a choice — and yes, Ted, it was _my_ choice, so stop looking so guilty — and I knew what the consequences of that choice might be. I still wouldn't choose any differently."

She glanced back to her husband, with the last bit, and Calista saw them exchange a brief, sweet glance, full of all sorts of things that Calista was only beginning to understand, with Gerald.

"Well," Calista said, around the sudden odd, hollow feeling in her gut; she placed her fork down, finding that her appetite had fled. "I suppose I got lucky, then. My choice was — is — _acceptable_."

Suddenly, she could think of nothing but the letter she'd received from her Uncle, when Oberon Flint had written that she was dating a Muggle-born, and her ensuing argument with Narcissa, where she'd corrected her aunt, and told her that Gerald was a half-blood. Now, her heart thumped in her chest, as she imagined what might have happened if Lucius' information had been right. Would she have been cast out, too, if she'd done as she threatened, and continued on with dating Gerald even if her aunt forbade it?

"Personally, I don't see why you care," Tonks muttered, "Miserable lot, the Malfoys. I'd just as soon be without them."

Calista felt a flash of anger; it might have been at Tonks, or it might even have been at Lucius, and the memory of his letter. She pushed her chair out, standing up suddenly.

"That's — yeah, that's an easy choice for you to make," Calista heard herself reply, "You don't need — because you've got _this_ ," Calista gestured to the table, laden with a beautiful dinner, and occupied by Ted and Andromeda, who were both looking mildly concerned, all of a sudden. "Them. I don't; I never have. I had _her_ , and now I have my dad, and I have Aunt Narcissa — I'm sorry she isn't up to your standards, _Nymphadora,_ but that's who I have."

"Ah, shit." Tonks was up at once, bounding out of her chair, and before Calista could properly react, she was being smothered by a hug. "I'm sorry, it's my big mouth again, I didn't mean it like that. 'Course it's fine, you know, if you like them. Don't listen to me."

Calista squirmed out of the hug, feeling embarrassed and still odd. She couldn't stop seeing the words of that letter again, now.

 _It seems a certain young lady who is very well known to me has been making some very questionable associations at school… I'm certain I don't need to elaborate on what these associations might be, or why they are utterly inappropriate… however I will be happy to do so…_

Then there had been the rest of it.

 _I trust you will understand my implication, and address the situation appropriately posthaste…_

And there was something else, something he'd said at the end. He'd called her _my only niece_ even though Calista was right now standing next to his other one. She'd been so angry, when she'd first read those words, but now, standing in the kitchen of the estranged part of her family, she felt something else, something new: she felt terrified.

For the first time in a long time, she wondered what would have happened, if Lucius and Narcissa had not eventually deemed Gerald _appropriate_ — would she _really_ have had the courage to make the same choice that Andromeda had? Would it have been worth losing the closest thing to a proper mother that she'd ever really had?

"Hey," Tonks said gently, nudging her elbow, "Don't — don't look like that, all right? I was just being stupid — and anyway, that stuff you said isn't true. It's _not_ just them you have. You've got us, too, now. Mum and Dad. Me. My big mouth."

"It's true, Calista," Andromeda said quietly; Calista realised belatedly that she and Ted had both risen, as well. "We're here for you, too, from now on, and you're welcome here, in our home, whenever you like."

Behind her, Ted nodded — it was no less sincere, for the stack of plates he was in the midst of clearing from the table.

"Seems our family's a bit larger these days than we all thought," he agreed, mildly. He glanced meaningfully at his wife. She caught his look, and frowned thoughtfully.

"Perhaps… perhaps we shouldn't go out tonight, Ted," she mused, "Perhaps we should tell Dora and Calista about —"

Tonks groaned. "Mum, no, come _on_ — you _promised_ you were going out tonight —"

"I think… actually, Dromeda, I think that's a very good idea. The tickets are good for either show; let's go tomorrow, instead."

Tonks rolled her eyes dramatically; it was only a moment later, when her mother crossed into the sitting room, and removed a folded sheet of parchment from the side-table drawer that her eyebrows rose with sudden interest.

"Hey, wait a minute — does whatever it is you're going to tell us have to do with the letter that enormous orange parrot delivered this morning?"

"As a matter of fact, it does," Andromeda said; then her gaze slid between both girls, her daughter and her niece, as she added: "And it has to do with family."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Andromeda's tale was a wild one, indeed, and one that Calista was hard-pressed to believe. The letter, as it turned out, was from Andromeda's cousin, the now-notorious Sirius Black. Its contents were even more unbelievable than its source.

"So it wasn't him?" Tonks clarified, after Andromeda had read the letter aloud to all of them, "It was this other guy, this Pettigrew bloke that they said he killed?"

"It seems that way; I'm waiting on confirmation, of course. I've written to Albus Dumbledore for confirmation; according to Sirius, Professor Dumbledore will corroborate his story. I must admit, it never sat right with me, what he was accused of — he was always my favourite cousin, and what they said he had done — it didn't _sound_ like him."

Calista was quiet; she couldn't quite process the whirling, rushing thoughts in her head; Sirius Black was _innocent_? But he hadn't _seemed_ innocent of anything, in the visions she'd seen, her father's memories… he'd been a bully. But then — Olivia Avril was a bully; Marcus Flint was a bully; it didn't make either one of them _murderers_.

"Do you remember him, Dora?" Andromeda asked quietly, touching the back of her daughter's hand lightly.

Tonks blinked, and nodded. "Yeah — I mean, of course I do, he sent me that toy broomstick, when I was — what, five or so? And he came to a few of my birthday parties. But I sort of made myself forget about all of that, when he was — when they said what he did."

"I remember him, too," Calista said, and all all three of them looked at her, in surprise.

"You do?" It was Ted who asked; Calista nodded.

"He was the one that — well, that rescued me, I guess, although honestly, I thought he was kidnapping me at the time."

She told them, briefly, the few details that she could remember — there had been dueling, and she remembered screaming; others', and her own. Everything had gone all black-and-white for a moment, and she had fallen down; that usually meant the Cruciatus Curse — she saw all three of her relatives start, horrified, when she repeated that matter-of-factly; it was good, she supposed, that it wasn't possible for humans to actually remember physical pain.

Still, even though she couldn't remember the pain precisely, she could recall too easily the vivid terror of _anticipating_ it. She shivered, suddenly finding that she'd choked on her words, and this time, she didn't squirm away when her cousin's arms came around her, and squeezed briefly. Gods, it was a hard story to tell; harder than she'd realised it was going to be. She realised she'd only ever told it once, in a much abridged form, to Gerald. The only other person who knew it was her father, but he had seen it, without her saying a word.

"So then he — Sirius — knocked her down, I think, and then… " Calista said, forcing herself to continue; the sooner she did, the sooner the story would be over, and she could think about something else. "And then he took me. We ran for a little while, and then he Apparated with me. I was… I was so afraid, I thought he was going to have me tortured and killed — that's what she always said would happen, if _they_ got me."

"Oh, sweetheart," Andromeda said, and she reached out and touched Calista's hand, precisely the way she had her own daughter's, "You poor thing."

Ted made a funny choking sound, and murmured something that sounded like 'I'm sorry'. Calista looked at him, and realised with a small start that he was fighting back tears, on behalf of… well, on behalf of _her_. The child she'd been; the niece he barely even knew. It was a hundred times more emotion than she'd ever seen from her Uncle Lucius, who had known her since she was twelve; the heavy, odd feeling was suddenly back in her gut.

"It's — erm — it was a long time ago," Calista said, squirming again, but it did nothing to release the weight that had suddenly taken hold of her. "I just — I wanted to tell you — tell _someone_ — that I remember him. There was a house he brought me to — now I know it was Harry Potter's mother's house, of all places, but I had no idea _where_ I was at the time —"

She told them the rest of what she could remember, from that house, and from Sirius' scattered visits there, and if any of them noticed that she had called it Harry's _mother's_ house instead of Harry's _parents'_ house, they didn't say so.

They were all very sympathetic and almost unbearably kind, and Calista didn't really know quite what to _do_ with it; she was used to affection from her father that was laced with sarcasm or humorous barbs, or even bitterness, and she was used to her Aunt Narcissa's warmth, followed by her gentle cajoling that things probably hadn't been _quite_ as bad as she remembered them; she was used to Lucius' detached, but protective, coldness, but _this_ was something else; this was what she'd glimpsed, in Gerald's cosy kitchen during family dinners, or on any given evening at Percy's home.

Her entire life, she'd been jealous of those with proper mothers, with proper _families_ , and now — just for a night — she was part of one; but she had no idea how to respond to it, and so, a few moments after she'd told her tale, she excused herself, and locked herself in the bathroom that was off of her cousin's bedroom.

It didn't take long for Tonks to come after her. Her knock was gentle at first, but after a few moments of prolonged silence, her cousin had started rattling the doorknob.

"Oi," she'd said, loudly, as though her mouth were practically against the door, "Let me in there, or I'll have to pee on your sleeping bag."

Calista felt a rush of grateful relief; humour, she could handle. She glanced at herself quickly in the mirror — her goddamned mascara was everywhere — and then she ran the taps and quickly washed her face with cold water. She took a breath, squared her shoulders, and rearranged her features, forcing everything she'd talked about, everything she'd been thinking about, back down, and then she turned around, and opened the door.

"I know perfectly well that there's another bathroom downstairs," she told her cousin, in a remarkably light voice, "You're just — well, you're just _taking the piss_."

Tonks grinned, and flopped her aqua-coloured fringe out of her eyes. "Right on that count," she agreed, "But see — _this_ bathroom is where I keep my firewhiskey."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

On Sunday, Calista's head was pounding as fiercely as it had in as long as she could recall; her first thought, when she started awake sometime in the grey hours of the morning, was that she'd been practising legilimency, and had forgotten to withdraw properly. She sat up, hoping that her father was home — if he _was_ , he might already have the potion she needed bottled and stored away, somewhere. If he _wasn't_ , she'd have to make it herself, and that didn't exactly feel doable, at the moment.

Her heart sank the second her eyes opened, as she took in her surroundings, and recalled, suddenly, what she'd _actually_ done — it wasn't botched legilimency, it was a thousand times worse, because it was utterly fucking _humiliating_.

She was in a bedroom with bright purple walls covered with Quidditch posters and quirky paintings; across the room, her cousin lay sprawled on a messy, unmade bed, aqua hair and one arm flopping over the side. She snored, occasionally, and rolled over, muttering something unintelligible. A half-empty bottle of firewhiskey still sat, open, on the nightstand beside the bed. Calista felt her stomach protest the second she set eyes on it, and in an instant, she had scrambled up, and locked herself in her cousin's bathroom for the second time.

She didn't remember being particularly enamoured of the firewhiskey the _first_ time around, but it was absolutely horrid coming back up. Her head was still pounding, and she felt clammy and sweaty, and it took several minutes _after_ there was absolutely nothing left in her stomach for it to stop convulsing wildly, and _still_ , none of that was the worst part. She let out a small groan, as the previous night came back to her in disjointed flashes.

It had started out well enough, after Tonks had come back out of the little bathroom, holding the bottle of amber-coloured liquid triumphantly. She'd poured a bit into a glass for Calista, and a whole lot more for herself. Calista had sniffed experimentally — it had smelled a strange combination of oak, cinnamon, and Scouring Solution — her stomach heaved again at the recollection, but there was nothing left for it to expel.

She'd taken a tiny, cautious sip, which was evidently the _wrong_ way to drink firewhiskey — she'd choked and spluttered, and spit it back into her cup, just as she'd been afraid of doing, and Tonks had tried very hard not to laugh at her, while she showed her the 'proper' way, which appeared to be to swallow it as fast you could, ostensibly so you couldn't taste the bloody stuff.

It did go down easier that way, but it was when the liquid hit her stomach that the _real_ trouble had begun; she'd taken a few uncertain swallows, the way Tonks had shown her, and the firewhiskey had seemed to spread through her entire body, filling it with a strange, heavy sort of heat, and making her head swim. She remembered saying a bunch of really _stupid_ things; she remembered asking her cousin, quite seriously, if her blood was going to be made of cinnamon now; and she remembered — oh, _Merlin's balls,_ she remembered _crying_.

She stood up, far too quickly, and felt the blood rush from her head; for a moment, she thought she might end up right back on the floor, in front of the toilet — but she managed to steady herself on the edge of the sink, and after a moment, her balance came back.

 _Water_ , she reminded herself, _You're supposed to drink water;_ except, how did she know that? She stifled another groan, as _that_ memory came back, too —

' _Shit,' Tonks had muttered, from somewhere above her, 'You're quite a lightweight, aren't you? I only gave you, like, two shots —' she'd felt something, then, a gentle tugging, and suddenly her head was in her cousin's lap, like she was five years old. 'Maybe two and a half,' Tonks had amended, and then she'd started to pull Calista's hair back, gently, from her face. 'Come on, up; I know you're tired, but you have to drink some more water — trust me, it'll make you feel better in the morning.' She'd sat up, blearily, and obeyed —_ gods, she could even remember her cousin _holding_ the cup of water up to her mouth, and prodding her to take another sip — and then, after she'd finished drinking the water, she'd actually _put her head back down in her cousin's lap_ , and let her continue stroking her hair. As far as she could recall that was how she'd fallen asleep, although Tonks had evidently — mercifully — moved away, at some point during the night, and gone to bed herself.

Calista washed her face, and rinsed her mouth out, and then, borrowing a glass from the edge of the sink, forced herself to drink water; that, at least, seemed like it was going to stay down, but it was still quite some time before she felt she could safely leave the bathroom.

Tonks had risen, by the time she came out; she was yawning and rubbing her eyes.

"Hey," her cousin said, with a little grin. "We match."

"Huh?"

She followed Tonks' gesture, down to her chest, and realised that she wasn't even wearing her own clothes; she was dressed in bright pink leggings that she never would have owned and a loose-fitting T-shirt with the name of a rock band on it — _Dungeon Dwellers_ , which irritated her, because she hated that band — and then the panic set in, as she realised she couldn't remember changing her clothes. How had that happened? Had her cousin _seen_ — wildly, Calista reached back, as if touching her scars would give her the answer.

"How did I — why am I wearing your clothes?"

"Because you didn't bring pajamas — or if you did, you weren't coherent enough to tell me where they were. Speaking of which, how are you feeling today?"

As if in answer, her stomach heaved again. "Eugh," was all she managed to say, intelligently. Tonks shook her head, ruefully.

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that — my fault, I should've realised, you're pretty tiny, it wouldn't take much —"

"I am _not_ tiny," Calista said, "I'm — I'm one point seven-five metres, they measured me at that stupid exam they gave me before I could start working."

"Yeah?" Tonks raised her brow. "They tell you how much you weigh?"

"Eight stone."

"Er, yeah — that's the problem. I really should've realised — anyway, you're all right?"

"I'll live. I think." She frowned, momentarily distracted from her queasy stomach and the shuddering pain in her head by her _other_ problem. "Seriously, how did I — I mean, did I dress myself?"

"Oh, yeah." Tonks, inexplicably grinned. "You were, erm — quite adamant on that. You made me leave the room, even though I promised not to look, anyway."

"Oh." She exhaled, relieved. Well, there was _that_ at least. Without the distraction, though, her body decided to remind her just how awfully she'd treated it the prior night.

"Eugh," she said for the second time, "I feel _awful_. Is this what drinking is always like?"

"Erm — if you do it wrong, it is. You're not going to be sick, are you?"

"Already was. I'm pretty sure there's nothing left, now."

Tonks winced sympathetically. "Right — so then, I know eating is probably the _last_ thing you feel like right now, but trust me, a good breakfast'll help. And a shower. Go on, you go first — " she grinned, "I promise I won't look."

Calista flushed, but a shower _did_ sound like a wonderful idea. Scowling, she hunted around on the floor of Tonks' cluttered room until she found her clothes from yesterday, and then — for a _third_ time — she locked herself in her cousin's bathroom.

The shower _did_ help, and being back in her own clothes felt nice, too. She even thought that the hollow shuddering in her stomach _could_ possibly be helped by food. Of course, feeling slightly better allowed her mind to concentrate instead on what a colossal arse she'd made of herself.

Tonks was sitting on her bed painting her toenails when Calista came out of the bathroom. A song— something by the the Weird Sisters, she thought — was playing on the wireless.

"Erm," Calista said, feeling her cheeks prickle with tell-tale heat, "So I'm sorry about — about making you take care of me last night, and — uh, all the stupid stuff I'm sure I said."

"Huh?" Tonks looked up, and shook her head, earnestly. "No, it was no big deal, really — trust me, I've been there myself, and besides, it's partly my fault. I feel pretty badly about not watching you closer at first." She tilted her head, and then quirked a crooked smile. "And anyway, you weren't stupid, you were pretty funny — kind of adorable, actually."

 _Oh, gods._ That sounded even worse. "Erm. What… what exactly did I say?"

"Well," Tonks said, "You talked about your boyfriend a lot. You said you'd still love him, even if he was a Muggle-born hippogriff, and — ah — you didn't care if that meant burning any trees down."

Calista's flush deepened. "I… yeah, I don't think that's _exactly_ what I meant to say."

"I figured out what you meant. It was pretty cute. Especially considering… I mean, what we talked about yesterday, with my parents… I bet Mum would be pleased if she knew you'd said that."

"Please don't tell her _any_ of the stupid things I said. Or did."

Tonks' grin widened. "It really wasn't _that_ bad — oh, and you did tell me, about forty times, that your Dad doesn't _really_ poison people."

She remembered that part. She frowned. There was one more thing she had to know, and she braced herself, hoping that whatever she'd said hadn't been too revealing, or too personal.

"Erm — I think I remember, uhm, crying. What was… what was that about?"

"Oh." Tonks' grin melted, and she frowned. She looked away, back at her toenails, though she still held the brush aloft. "We, uh — we both were. We started talking about that letter that Mum read, her cousin Sirius — you told me how they were going to give him the Dementor's Kiss, at Hogwarts, before he got away, and we…"

Tonks' voice wavered slightly. "We agreed that it was pretty much the most awful thing, anyway, but to have it happen if you were _innocent_ …" she shuddered. "Don't feel bad about _that_ , Calista. It's fucking horrid, we were both upset, and I still am, I think.

Calista's limbs trembled, suddenly. The vision from her dream returned, in full force — clammy hands wrapped around her neck, shuddering, cold breaths —

"I — I don't think I want talk about that anymore," she managed, and Tonks nodded, gratefully.

"Me either," she said, capping the nail polish decisively. She switched off the wireless and swung her legs over the side of the bed, "Come on, let's go eat; I'm sure Mum's making breakfast, she always does on Sundays."

"I don't know if I believe it yet," Calista said, seemingly out of the blue; it seemed suddenly important to say so, aloud. "I don't know if I believe that he's innocent."

"I know, it's hard to think that something as big as that could've been wrong for so long — but you heard Mum, she's asking Dumbledore."

"Yeah." Calista frowned. She wasn't so certain that she considered Professor Dumbledore a reliable witness; but then, who _else_ would know, if it were true? Who else could she ask, to confirm the story?

"You sure you're all right?" Tonks asked, pausing beside her, 'You still look a bit peaky."

"I'm fine," Calista said, automatically. Tonks frowned; and then, after a moment, she grinned.

"Hey," she said, "I hope you know — even though you were a bit of a sap last night and you can't hold your liquor for shit, all that stuff that _I_ said — 'course you might not remember I said it, but I did — is still true."

Calista blinked, uncertain. "Erm — what _did_ you say?"

Tonks rolled her eyes, and pulled Calista into a one-armed hug; she managed not to start.

"Duh, that I love you, 'cuz. And I'm glad you decided not to disown me."

Calista managed a tiny, weak grin. Perhaps she _was_ starting to feel a tiny bit better, after all. "Me, too."

"Now that that's settled — let's _eat_. I'm as hungry as a bloody wolf, suddenly."

And all at once, Calista knew who she could ask, about whether or not to believe Sirius Black.


	3. Ghosts

**3\. Ghosts**

Summer eked by, day by sweltering day; Calista settled into something of a routine — nights of waking, and worrying, as the nightmares came and went, in their usual pattern — days filled with work, which was increasingly unpleasant, but made bearable by her lunch breaks with Amelia, and her dinners, afterward, with Gerald, who was still patiently honouring her request to teach her how to cook, though she was beginning to suspect that she utterly lacked the talent.

Tonks had been inviting her over, too, but Calista hadn't gone; partly, she was waiting until she got a reply to the letter she'd sent, the day she'd gotten home from her last visit, and partly, she was still thoroughly embarrassed by the fact that she had gotten drunk, which seemed like an incredibly stupid idea to her, when she considered how much she _could_ have given away, how much she _could_ have revealed — nevermind that she hadn't, this time.

There was something else, too; she _had_ gone to Uncle Lucius and Aunt Narcissa's, and she had spent the entire time wondering — what _would_ happen, if they suddenly decided to disapprove of Gerald, or of any of her other friends? She thought that what she had told her cousin, and what she had told Gerald once, was true — she wouldn't let them dissuade her — but what would happen _then_?

It was one thing to declare, defiantly and in anger, that she didn't care; and it was one thing for Andromeda to say that she accepted the choice she had made — but the _other_ thing she'd said to her cousin that evening was also true; for the longest time, her father and the Malfoys were the only family she'd known. She believed that they cared for her; that they even _loved_ her… but _would_ they cut ties with her, as easily as they had with Narcissa's sister, if she displeased them?

It weighed on her, and her nightmares weighed on her, and her job — and the fact that Astra _still_ hadn't signed the release, to let her start working for the Committee — weighed on her, and the longer she went without a reply to her letter, the more that began to weigh on her, too.

And then, she had another dream.

 _She was back at school, looking at that mysterious map — the one from Professor Lupin's office — and just like before, she saw something, suddenly, that made her blood run cold._

 _A tiny dot, at the edge of the lake made her head swim, and her throat burn in fear. 'Bellatrix Lestrange' was written beside it — but it_ couldn't _be, that was impossible. No one had ever broken out of Azkaban…_

 _As if summoned by her thoughts, Sirius Black appeared in the doorway; his face was waxy and bony, like a skeleton, his eyes empty and cold, maniacal, as they had appeared in the paper._

' _Actually,' he rasped, in a voice that sounded as dead as he looked, 'I did it.'_

 _She opened her mouth; she wanted to ask him_ how _he had done it, and to beg him not to tell her mother how; but then, suddenly, an object flashed in his hand, silver and sharp and —_

— _and she remembered, her mother was already_ out _, her mother was already_ here _, she'd seen it on the Charmed map._

 _She opened her mouth, and screamed — Black advanced, eyes and blade flashing, and he lifted the knife, high into the air._

' _No,' she gasped, 'Please, don't — not that —'_

 _She reached for her wand, but it fell, dropping from her fingers as soon as she'd gripped it. It rolled away. Sirius Black kept coming; and then, suddenly, he stopped, only a pace away. He frowned, and looked at the knife quizzically, as if he didn't understand how it had come to be in his grip._

' _Very impressive Freezing Charm,' he said, inexplicably, and all at once he dropped the knife; it clattered to the stone floor, beside her wand._

' _But I didn't, —' Calista stammered, 'I dropped my wand, I didn't cast anything.'_

 _The dream shifted; suddenly, she was outside, and she was running. Her first thought was that her father was in danger, and she had to find him. She ran to the lake; there was some reason, wasn't there, why she was supposed to go towards the lake?_

 _The ground, coated in thick, dewy grass and the pitch-black of night, rocked and bucked below her feet; twice, she fell down, and each time, it was difficult to get back up. She ended up crawling the final stretch, towards the lake. She reached the bank; he would be there, and he would be bleeding, and cross, but he would be all right, and he would take her back to the castle._

 _She threw herself over the bank, and the ground shifted again; it pitched her forward, dizzyingly fast, over the grass and towards the surface — and then, suddenly, she remembered who was really waiting by the lake; she remembered the dot she had seen, on the map, the tiny calligraphic label._

' _Daughter,' her mother cooed, 'So nice of you to join us.'_

 _Calista was face-down in the grass, frozen in fear; she could feel something icy-cold lapping at the edge of her face — the lake, she realised, she had nearly fallen in — but there was something very peculiar in the way that her mother had said 'us'_.

 _She forced herself to look up, and her blood turned to ice in her veins. Her mother was most certainly_ not _alone._

' _Don't touch him,' she whispered; her mother's face spread into a grin, and she threw her head back, laughing throatily. Black curls danced wildly around her shoulders, as she reinforced her iron grip on her hostage. Gerald tried to yank his arm away, and she hissed a curse at him — he winced in pain, and slumped over._

' _No!' Calista yelled; she launched herself forward, but the ground bucked again, and she fell, uselessly, at her mother's feet._

' _You must have known this was coming,' her mother said, almost gently, 'You didn't really believe I'd let you keep a Mudblood, did you?'_

' _You can't — I won't let you do anything to him —'_

' _Oh, Calista, it's not just him.' Her mother smirked, and knelt, so that they were nearly level; but her face was blurred, indistinct. It was as if she were fading; as if she were a ghost._

' _I'm not going to let you keep_ anything _,' her mother said, and she reached a hand out, lifting her daughter up off the ground —_

 _Except, when she rose, when_ they _rose together, it wasn't her mother, anymore; and the bank she was on wasn't the lake, after all._

 _The cold, clammy grey hand of a dementor wrapped around her; behind her, where she'd thought the lake belonged, was the surface of an enormous Pensieve, milky and haunted; and from its surface, an army of dementors glided towards her, mouths open and rattling; Calista felt herself turning to ice._

' _Ex — expecto —' It was no use; the spell was failing; the dementors were coming; they were pulling her into the Pensieve, and it was icy and cold, just as she'd always imagined the lake to be._

 _There was only one other thing she could yell: one thing that might save her._

' _Dad!' she screamed, as clawing hands pulled her down into the icy pool of memory —_

Calista started awake, roused by her own scream, and by the rattling of the dementors' dead breaths; her heart pounded, and she shivered and shuddered. It took several seconds of panic to realise that she _was_ awake, that she was in her own bedroom, and that she was utterly fucking _freezing_.

Lightning flashed, lighting the room; dimly, she realised that the rattling sound wasn't dementors at all, but _rain_ , pounding against the roof, and — she scrambled out of bed, clawing at the side table, until her fingers latched onto her wand.

' _Lumos,'_ she gasped, and finally, she understood why the sound was so loud, and why she was so cold, and why she was _wet_.

She had fallen asleep with the skylights open — it had been stiflingly hot, earlier, she recalled, when she'd gone up to bed — and now, rain was pouring and blowing in through them; she nearly slipped in puddles twice, when she dashed to close them up.

She paused, underneath the last of the skylights; the rain still pounded against the glass, and her feet were still in a puddle, but — surely, some of the noise was her father, racing up the attic steps towards her; after all, she had heard herself screaming, when she woke up, _of course_ he would come.

She waited, and the rhythmic tapping went on above her, but there was none from below. Eventually, she gathered her nerve, and she tiptoed over to the trapdoor, easing it open. It creaked loudly, and she paused, listening again — surely _that_ would rouse her father, since her screams, and the storm, hadn't?

When he still didn't come, Calista navigated carefully down the wooden steps; now that she knew the rattling, and the wet, and the cold were only a storm, she wasn't really afraid; but bits and pieces of the nightmare still flittered in and out of her mind, and she wanted to talk about it, to make sense of it; and honestly, she just wanted, for a minute, not to be alone.

She crossed the corridor downstairs to her father's bedroom door, and she tapped lightly; when he didn't answer, she tapped again, more insistently, and finally, she resorted to an outright knock.

The door wasn't properly latched; the force of her last knock sent it easing open, just as another flash of lightning came in through the windows — and she could see at once that the room was empty.

She went downstairs, but she already knew by then what she would find; he wasn't home.

Calista knew she should go back to bed — it was late, or early, it hardly mattered which, and she had to work tomorrow (or today), and it wasn't just her _own_ potions she had to pay attention to — she had to make sure that Astra didn't screw anything up — but in that moment, the idea of climbing all the way back upstairs, to her dark and lonely and _wet_ bedroom seemed unbearable.

Instead, she lit the fire, and pulled the room's single, worn armchair in front of it. She sank into it, trying not to think of the skinny, sad little boy that she'd glimpsed in it, _or_ of his father — mostly because she didn't want to think of Pensieves at all — and she resisted the urge to try and call Gerald on the fire she huddled in front of. It probably wouldn't work; his mother was a Muggle, and so it was doubtful that the Ministry had allowed the fireplace to be connected to the Floo Network, even now that Gerald was of age and out of school, and besides, _Gerald_ had to work in the morning, too. There was no sense in both of them being up, and miserable. At any rate, her father would surely be home, soon, and then she would have someone to talk to.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista exhaled, reading the short letter for the third time. She might have stood there, in front of the open kitchen window, until the quaking of last night's dream worked its way through her nerves and her limbs, and perhaps if she _had_ , the day would have gone smoother; but she didn't, and neither did the day.

Instead, she heard the tell-tale creaking of footsteps coming downstairs, and the unmistakable sound of the bookcase-door opening, and she folded the parchment in a hurry, stuffing it into the pocket of her work robes, just as Severus Snape came through the kitchen doorway.

Then he _had_ come home last night; but she hadn't heard him, and she'd been up for at least an hour after her nightmare, before she'd felt capable of going back upstairs. She wasn't certain, but she was fairly confident that it had been only a few hours before dawn when she'd finally doused the fire, put the chair back in its proper place, and climbed back upstairs to dry out her bedroom. After that, it had been a couple of hours of fitful sleep, and then she'd had to get up and dress for work.

Calista eyed him silently, wondering if he would say anything about where he'd been last night, or how long he'd been there.

"Has the paper come yet?" he asked, moving at once to the coffee pot; he seemed unconcerned, which made her briefly, inexplicably, angry.

Calista shook her head, and then, realising he wasn't looking at her, managed:

"No. Late again."

"I suppose I expected no less. Coffee?"

It was a rhetorical question. "Obviously," Calista murmured, touching her pocket absently. She should tell him, shouldn't she? About the dream, probably. About the letter, almost certainly. She cut him a sidelong glance. "Did you hear the storms last night?"

"No; were there some?"

She blinked. Either he had managed to sleep _far_ more soundly than she had — wherever he had been — or else he'd been somewhere where there _weren't_ storms. How far away would he have had to be, for that to be true?

"Yeah," she said, frowning. She opened the icebox, and peered inside. Sausages; why was it that they only ever had sausages? She _hated_ sausages.

"Dad?"

"What is it?" Severus didn't look up, measuring the coffee grounds; he used his wand to supply a jet of heated water.

"There's something I need to tell you."

"What is it?"

 _I had a nightmare, again_ ; but no, she decided — she didn't want to talk about that, not now, when it had finally started to break apart, in her mind; not when she had begun to forget some of the details. Still — there was something else she could tell him, something else she knew she _should_ tell him, and it was nearly burning a hole in her pocket.

"It's something I found out."

He looked up, suddenly sharp, suddenly suspicious. His jaw worked, and he swallowed, and then, inexplicably:

"Have you fed the owls yet?"

Calista blinked. "No… not yet."

"See to that," her father said, curtly, "And then we can talk."

Calista nodded, frowning, and then slipped outside through the kitchen's back door. She didn't go because of a sense of obedience _or_ out of concern for the owls, who were released nearly every night and generally could hunt for themselves quite capably; she went because it gave her a minute to gather her thoughts, and to slip the letter quietly and surreptitiously out of her pocket, and read it one more time.

 _Calista,_

 _I must admit that I was surprised to receive a letter from you. It is hard to imagine, after the events that transpired at the end of term, that you would want my opinion or my word on any matter, but since you have asked, I will answer you as well as I am able._

 _Sirius Black is indeed innocent of the crimes he was imprisoned for. I can offer you no proof, except my word (whatever that is worth to you) that I heard the confession from the true perpetrator, and saw him — Peter Pettigrew — alive, with my own eyes, when he should have been dead nearly thirteen years._

 _I also offer the assurance — again without proof — that Sirius means no harm to you._

 _I hope this response, late though it is, finds you well; even better if it can help you in some small way._

 _Remus_

His response _was_ late; she had written him nearly three full weeks ago, and in the meantime, had already received Andromeda's assurances — by owl, because she still wouldn't go over their house — of his innocence, backed up by Albus Dumbledore himself. And still, as her dream had evidenced, she hadn't quite believed it, until this morning.

 _Sirius means no harm to you._

That — _if_ she believed it — had come very close to answering another question, one that she hadn't dared to ask either Remus or her aunt, because she was afraid of the answer, either way.

If Sirius Black had been the one to leak a particular document from her school file, then Remus' assurance was a lie, or it was wrong, and Sirius _did_ mean her harm; if he hadn't been the one, then that meant she still didn't know who had, and the remaining pool of possibilities was too small for comfort.

Calista approached the bucket of Owl Meal they kept in the yard for daytime feedings — a repulsive, yet nevertheless useful, mix of rodent meat and insect parts — and doled a portion out for each owl, using the motion as a cover to slip the letter back into her pocket.

By the time she'd gone back inside and washed her hands, her father was seated at the table, with a mug of coffee, and an exceptionally grim expression. An identical mug sat at her customary place, and beside it was a plate of toast.

Ah — _not_ an identical mug; while his was one of the plain, black ones they typically used, _her_ coffee had been poured into her favourite mug, one that had been a birthday present from Amelia, and that never failed to make her laugh, when she used it.

 _Espresso Patronum_ , it said, and even now, with the weight of the letter in her pocket and the spectre of her nightmare in the back of her mind, she cracked a tiny smile at the sight of it. Strange, though; she hadn't used it in awhile, and she was fairly certain that it had been relegated to the back of the cupboard, which meant he'd purposely gone looking for it, though she couldn't imagine why, unless he _did_ know, somehow, that she'd had a bad night.

"So — erm, there's something I have to tell you," Calista said, around the rim of the mug.

Severus nodded, looking resigned, and still decidedly grim. "Yes," he said, "Something you've — just found out, is it?"

"Yes. Actually, I… well, I've been wondering for a while, but now… now I think I know."

Severus grimaced; he looked as if he were bracing himself.

"Very well," he muttered, "I suppose it was only a matter of time —"

"It's about Sirius Black," she said in a rush, and a peculiar series of expressions flashed across his face; at first, he looked inexplicably _relieved_ , and then surprised, and then — well, and then he was grim, again.

"It's about — _who_?"

"Sirius Black," Calista said again, "He — Dad, I've just learned that he's innocent —"

Severus snarled, lip curling, and Calista added, quickly:

"The murders — Dad, it's true, he was never a Death Eater, which means he _isn't_ in league with her, and he's _not_ after me —"

"Obviously," Severus spat, features taut. She thought she saw his hands tremble, as he rose, coffee mug in hand. He dumped the liquid — nearly a full mug, still visibly steaming — down the drain, and practically slammed the mug down into the basin.

"Hey, I would have finished that! And what do you mean, ' _obviously'?_ " Calista lifted her gaze to him, in disbelief. "You _knew_ already?"

"Of course I knew; you think I would have allowed you the freedom I have, to stay in the house alone, and to Apparate wherever and whenever you please if I _hadn't_ already been assured of that?"

"But — but —" Calista felt her stomach drop, suddenly. An unwelcome emotion begin to stir in her gut, and her grip on the handle of her mug tightened, along with her voice. _Stay in the house alone?_ Who even said she _wanted_ that? But saying so would make her sound like a dreadful baby, so she latched onto the other thing that was bothering her: "How did you know he was innocent?"

Severus' jaw twitched, and for a moment, she thought he wouldn't answer. The feeling in her gut intensified, beginning to burn and roil, though she was still loathe to admit what it was.

"The Headmaster informed me of Black's supposed 'innocence' a few days after he escaped the castle," he finally admitted, through gritted teeth, "But the more _interesting_ question is — how do _you_ know?"

His eyes glittered, suddenly piercing, and she was granted a brief reprieve from the building pressure in her insides as she concentrated on _not_ looking guilty; there was no doubt whatsoever that he would be furious if he knew that she'd written to Remus, and doubly so if he knew that he'd replied.

"Aunt Andromeda told me," she said; it wasn't precisely a lie. "She got a letter, and Professor Dumbledore told her it was true, when she wrote to ask him."

"I see," her father said, almost casually; and then, more forcefully: "I _see_. They're in contact, then? Black and — and ' _Aunt Andromeda'_?"

There was a bitter sort of twist to his words, and the heat in her gut started to swirl and rise, again.

"They're cousins," she said, shortly; was he _really_ going to turn this around, and make it _her_ fault, after everything? "Why shouldn't they be?"

"You know," Severus said, and once more, he was almost deceptively conversational, "I'm not certain that I approve, any longer, of your going over there."

The heat swirled, again, and sparked. It was filling her chest, now, too.

"Why?" she challenged, "Because Aunt Andromeda told me the truth about something you couldn't be bothered to?"

"Because he _is_ still a murderer," Severus practically spat, "He tried to murder _me_ — or have you already forgotten? And because — because the last time you went to see ' _Aunt Andromeda'_ , you came home smelling like firewhiskey — or did you think I didn't notice?"

Something inside Calista snapped, and the feeling of heat, of _rage_ was no longer coiled in her gut — it was riding exactly where it was most familiar, just beneath her skin.

" _Fine_ ," Calista agreed, starting as a hiss and transforming into something anguished, something between a yell and a cry: "So he _is_ a murderer — but you've known — you've known since _June_ that he wasn't on _her_ side, wasn't targeting _me_ , and you never thought I might want to _know_ that?"

Severus looked suddenly startled; he blanched, and retreated a step. "I saw no reason," he muttered, "to bring it up to you —"

She gaped; being pursued by Sirius Black was not usually one of her more prominent nightmares, it was true; but it _was_ one of them, and in _her_ mind at least, that awful night in January was not _so_ far away…

"Yeah," she said; she heard herself laugh bitterly, in disbelief. "No reason — not because he could've shared a cell with _her_ , or because he broke into my school with a _nn—_ with a —" Suddenly, she couldn't say the word again, and that made her _angrier_. "But yes," she snarked, voice breaking, "Firewhiskey is _so_ much worse —"

She choked on the words, and then — and then she felt hollow and empty, all at once. As it so often did when it was laced in with fear, her rage had come and gone, and she was suddenly deflated and unsteady, and she wanted nothing more than to leave the conversation behind, before her eyes began their tell-tale sting.

"Calista —"

"I have to go," she said, voice small and tight, "I'm late for work."

"That can wait a few minutes —" he started, almost placatingly, and Calista narrowed her eyes, and pushed past him, setting her chin stubbornly. She was _not_ going to cry, not unless she stayed here, unless they kept talking.

"No," she said, injecting force into her words. "It can't, actually; but I'm certain whatever _you_ have to say can wait another — oh, two months. That's the standard we're on now, right?"

"Calista!" he called after her, warningly, now; she ignored him, and pulled open the front door. "You _will_ come straight home after work, so we can finish this conversation —"

"Why?" she spat, over her shoulder, "You probably won't be home, anyway."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

When Calista arrived at St. Mungo's and approached the portrait that guarded the Potions Brewing Department, she did a double-take; standing in front of it, looking quite agitated, was _Percy_.

"This is official Ministry business," Percy was insisting, vehemently, to the portrait's very dismissive-looking subject. "You really must let me pass."

"Percy?" Calista called out, disbelieving. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"Ah, Calista! You're only a _few_ minutes late, but no matter — you received my owl, of course — I'm here to conduct my official survey on cauldron thickness for Mr. Crouch."

"I did get your owl," she acknowledged, "But erm — I thought you were joking."

"Joking? Good heavens, I would never joke about official Ministry business —"

"You really like that phrase, don't you?"

" — so if you'll just show me to your cauldron storage, I look forward to completing this section of my report quite promptly."

Percy drew himself up expectantly. Calista frowned. At least, if nothing else, Percy's presence was a welcome distraction from her horrible morning, and the even worse night before it.

"What are you here for again?" she finally asked, while the portrait of Gaspard Shingleton frowned over both of them disapprovingly.

"I need to record the material and thickness, overall and at key stress points, for each of the cauldrons currently being used for medical solutions, and compare that to the standards defined in Section Seven Eighty-Nine R, Part Four, of the International Standards Register for Miscellaneous Magical Equipment — Really, Calista, it's quite simple and I explained it all very clearly in my owl."

Calista blinked. "Right. Well, I don't know if I'm allowed to let you in — I have to check with Princ—" she glanced at the portrait, "Er, I have to check with Astra."

Percy huffed impatiently, and Calista approached the portrait, waiting to be let in.

"Oh, you again," the portrait sniffed, "Tell me, young lady, has Severus acquired a massive fortune or a stunningly beautiful twenty-two-year old wife yet?"

"No," Calista said, "Just an average-looking daughter tasked with the misfortune of babysitting your — er, _beautiful —_ wife."

With the inherent gift of Snape, she did a very admirable job of making 'beautiful' sound like a code word for 'stupid'.

"Average?" the portrait sneered, swinging open reluctantly, "With that nose? Hah!"

Percy blinked. "I say, as a supposed representative of the hospital, that portrait seems highly unprofessional — and aren't the subjects of sentient portraits supposed to be dead?"

Calista rolled her eyes, disappearing behind the portrait.

"I could only be so lucky," she muttered over her shoulder to Percy, and then, louder: "Ignore him. He and my father were roommates in school, and evidently they had a bit of a Potions rivalry which has somehow become _my_ problem, because why wouldn't it? Wait here, I'll come back and let you know if you're allowed in."

As it turned out, Astra was quite keen to host a Ministry employee in her department, although she seemed disappointed when she set eyes on Percy.

"I _was_ hoping for a visit from Mr. Crouch himself," she said, wistfully, "I do like to make new contacts at the Ministry. Ah, well." she waved Percy towards a shelving unit packed full of self-stirring cauldrons. "Go on, I suppose."

"Oh, I assure you, Ms. Shingleton, I _do_ have Mr. Crouch's utmost trust and confidence — I shall pass on your compliments, of course."

Astra blinked, and fluttered her lashes. "Oh, no, that won't do at all," she said, shaking her head, "I never compliment anyone, until after they've complimented me first. You may describe my beauty to him, if you wish."

Percy blinked. "Erm."

"Yeah," Calista muttered quietly, as she slipped past him, carrying an old, heavy cauldron with no self-stirring enchantment, "Welcome to my life."

Astra turned her gaze to somewhere just above Calista's head, and frowned. "That's _not_ an approved cauldron, Callie."

"And _that_ ," Calista said tartly, setting the cauldron down at her chosen workstation with a solid, resounding _thud_ , "Is not an approved nickname."

"Tell her, Mr. Crouch's assistant," Astra commanded, "Tell her that cauldron's not acceptable."

Dutifully, Percy scampered over to inspect it; he made quite a show of tapping his wand to it in several spots, and muttering numbers that meant nothing to Calista.

"Actually," he said, after a moment, "I'm pleased to report that this particular cauldron is perfectly dimensioned to distribute heat and well _exceeds_ the stability standards set forth in Section Seven Eighty-Nine R, Part Four, of the International Standards —"

"That's quite enough," Astra snapped, suddenly cold. Calista groaned inwardly. If there was anything that was guaranteed send Astra into a vengeful mood, it was being corrected. "Callie, put that old thing away, and take one of the self-stirring cauldrons. I _insist_."

"You can't make a Disinfecting Draught with a self-stirring cauldron," Calista reminded her, for what felt like the hundredth time, "It bruises the elderberry."

"No, it doesn't. Don't be silly."

"It _does_ — and anyway, the Astragalus root mixes better if it's folded in rather than stirred —"

Astra's eyes were beginning to narrow dangerously. Griselle and Kyle, two of her co-workers, were both suddenly apprehensive. Kyle sighed loudly and Griselle muttered something that sounded suspiciously like ' _shut up_ '.

"Is that so?" Astra's eyebrows lifted nearly to her hairline. "Kyle? _Does_ the cauldron cause a problem with the Astragalus root and the elderberries?"

Kyle nodded, tiredly.

"Well, then," Astra said, folding her arms. "Callie will simply make it without those things."

Calista gaped. "Are you serious — you _can't_ , it won't be effective —"

"Of course it will."

"No, it _won't — ow!_ "

Calista hissed and started, as Kyle bumped her elbow, not at all gently or subtly.

"Just do what she says," he muttered, "Or she'll never shut up. Dump it out when she leaves and make it again, the right way — that's what we all do."

"But that's wasteful —"

"So what? The department can obviously afford it; Trust me, you're not going to win this argument, _Callie_."

"That's _not_ my name."

"You know I hate to make threats," Astra said sweetly, "But if you can't follow direction, then I'm afraid I can't, in good conscience, consider signing the papers to send you as a department representative to the Exponential Charms Committee."

Griselle coughed beside her, and Percy gaped.

"For Merlin's sake," Calista said very quietly, under her breath, "It's _Experimental_ , you hare-brained mannequin."

Kyle coughed suddenly, hiding his face in his elbow.

Astra blinked. "What was that?"

"I said — er — you don't have to tell me to switch cauldrons again."

"That's what I thought," Astra said, breaking into a wide, satisfied smile as Calista dragged her chosen cauldron over to the rack and switched it out for one of the self-stirrers.

"There," Astra said, moments later, sweet once more, as Calista lined up ingredients she was only going to have to throw away later, "That wasn't so difficult, was it, Callie?"

Calista cringed; gods, she hated the way that name sounded. Percy caught her eye.

"If it makes you feel any better," he whispered sympathetically, a frown creasing his freckled face, "Mr. Crouch keeps calling me 'Weatherby'."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

By the time Calista caught up on re-brewing the day's potions, it was well past dinnertime and she was starving; the night shift employees had arrived and worked alongside her. They must have been used to members of the day shift staying late to rectify potions Astra had overseen or had a hand in, as they didn't bat an eye to see her there.

She Apparated back to her neighborhood, and approached the front door quietly. She wasn't certain whether Severus would be home, and she wasn't certain whether she _wanted_ him to be home. A significant part of her wanted only to eat just enough to quiet the growling of her stomach, and then hide in her bed. With any luck, it would provide a better refuge this night than it had the last.

He was sitting in the armchair, reading, or pretending to. He set the book aside and rose as soon as she slipped through the door, locking and re-enchanting it behind her.

"You're late," he said, and even though his tone wasn't particularly accusatory, Calista snarled defensively.

"I was stuck at work; are you going to tell me you don't approve of me going there, either?"

"I reacted badly this morning," Severus acknowledged, grudgingly, and then: "Was everything all right at work?"

"It was the same as always; I spent most of the day making sure Astra didn't poison anyone, and had to re-do everything once she left. Oh, and your 'friend' Gaspard's portrait has moved on to taking cracks at my appearance; low-hanging fruit, really. I must admit I expected better."

Severus sneered. "Gaspard's an idiot."

"So you've said." Calista sidestepped him, and headed into the kitchen, and started pulling open cupboards. There had to be _something_ she could eat. Maybe Gerald was right; maybe they _didn't_ keep enough food at the house.

She heard footsteps behind her, as he followed her as far as the doorway.

"Ask him to remind you how many cauldrons he blew up trying to make a simple Swelling Solution —"

"I most certainly will _not_ ," Calista retorted, "It may come as a surprise to _both_ of you, but I really don't care whatever petty rivalry you had at school, and I certainly don't want to be a part of it — although evidently, I haven't got a choice."

Severus exhaled through his nose, haw hardening. " _Rivalry?_ Hardly. That fool barely scraped an 'A' in his O.W.L., and that was after bribing the examiner not to take points off for melting the table."

"Again, I really don't care. Have we got _anything_ to eat besides bread? I'm really getting tired of toast."

"There's a plate for you in the icebox," Severus said, "Narcissa invited us over for dinner; I went alone, once it became apparent you weren't going to be home at a reasonable hour, and she sent some things home for you."

Calista felt a spark of her earlier ire returning; _she_ was the one who wasn't home at reasonable hours? She hid a dark look under pretense of removing the covered plated from the icebox, and casting a warming spell on it.

"Lucius tells me that plans are underway to re-introduce the Triwizard Tournament, to be hosted at Hogwarts this year."

"Really?" Calista was startled enough by the news to shed her sour expression briefly. "The Triwizard Tournament? I thought they scrapped that idea a few hundred years ago because so many of the participants were getting killed."

"New safety regulations are being drafted; Lucius says there's to be an age restriction, among other measures. I'm told confidence is high that _this_ one will not be deadly; however, that being said, I must admit I'm relieved that you're no longer at school, and that Draco is too young to enter."

"Who says I'd even want to enter?" she asked, stabbing a piece of chicken with her fork, "I've grown accustomed to life with all four limbs."

"It's traditional for every eligible Slytherin student to submit their name for consideration; we are the house of ambition, after all."

"Oh."

It only took a moment of silence for Calista's dark thoughts to begin to seep back in; she scowled, as if that would hold them at bay for the first time in her life. If it could, of course, then the Snapes would have undoubtedly been exempt from dark thoughts.

"Lucius thinks he'll get more information at the Quidditch World Cup."

"Right," Calista said, recalling his and Draco's smug description of their acquired seats the last time she had seen them. _Away from the riff-raff, of course,_ Draco had said. "In the top box, as a special guest of the Minister for Magic."

"Indeed." If she had looked up from her dinner, she would have seen her father cast her quite a queer look, indeed. And then:

"Did Lucius tell you how he came by those particular seats?"

"No." _Who cares?_ She thought privately.

"Hm. Perhaps you'll see, soon enough."

It seemed a strange thing to say, and she was about to ask him for clarification when he changed tacks suddenly.

"They were sorry you couldn't make it," he told her, as she sat down at the table, hardly tasting what was admittedly very good food, for all her exhaustion. "Your aunt and uncle. They were interested to hear more about your job at the hospital. Lucius inquired whether things had been improving for you; I believe Draco wanted to ask if you'd seen any interesting curses."

"He should ask Amelia, then, that's the ward she's on. I'm still relegated to the basement, in what I'm certain comes as a shocking plot twist." She wasn't quite certain what made her add, afterwards: "Oh, that's right — Draco can't ask Amelia anything, because Muggle-borns are beneath his notice."

Severus' brow rose briefly, and then he stepped further into the kitchen, so that he blocked the doorway fully and she wouldn't be able to leave without passing him.

"Is something wrong, Calista?"

She scowled, and shoved a forkful of vegetables she hardly tasted into her mouth. _The nightmares are back and I can't sleep. I can't stop worrying that my murderous mother will escape Azkaban and come after me. My boss is an idiot and my co-workers hate me. It doesn't look like Astra will be signing my papers to work with the Committee anytime soon, and I still don't know who sabotaged my job prospects in the first place, or whether they've still got it in for me. I'm afraid my family might eventually disown me. I'm worried that October, when Gerald's father's tried in the Muggle courts, won't really be the end of it, and I'm supposed to manage to go to a wedding next month without making a complete arse of myself in front of his entire family when I have no idea what a wedding actually entails. Oh, and I hate being in the house alone at night, and you're about to go back to living at school full-time._

"No," she said, "Everything's just bloody perfect."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

"I like to start with a very hot pan," Gerald said, dropping a spot of oil into the pan as an indicator, and turning the burner on. "And sear the outside; then I'll move it to a new pan and put it in the oven, to cook the inside more slowly. Do you think he could be lying to you?"

She was spending the afternoon — a beautiful, bright, sunny afternoon, during which both Gerald's mother and his younger brother had gone out — at Gerald's home. Despite the heat outside, several open windows and a brisk breeze — and perhaps a Charm or two — ensured that the small, airy kitchen was quite comfortable.

She had just explained about her aunt's declaration of Sirius Black's innocence, and the letter she'd received in response from Remus, in between the steps of Gerald's cooking lesson; like with most things that kept her hands busy, it made it seem somehow easier for her to talk, to tell him things, and it was helping, even if Sirius Black was only the first straw in a very large haystack of things weighing her down.

"Remus? I — actually, I don't think he would. In the past, when there was something I asked that he didn't want to tell me, he just refused to answer. And besides, Aunt Andromeda said that Professor Dumbledore confirmed the story, too."

"It's a pretty wild tale," Gerald said, frowning; he adjusted the dials on the stove, turning the heat slightly higher. "Horrific, too, if you consider the implications — an innocent man spending over a decade in _that place_ , while the real murderer walked free? And no one noticed?"

"That's the part I don't quite understand; no one will tell me how this Pettigrew fellow evaded capture for so long."

"There has to be more to the story," Gerald agreed. His frown pulled down further, a wrinkle of concern appearing in his forehead. "Calista, I suppose it isn't really any of my business, but — it makes me nervous, that you're keeping in touch with this professor, this Remus, and you haven't told your father about it."

Calista lifted her gaze, eyed widening in alarm. "You can't tell him — he'd be furious, they hate each other — or at least, my dad hates _him_."

"You know I won't, _mon colibri_ , not if you don't want me to, but… from what you've told me, about… about what happened, about their history… he might be a perfectly nice man _most_ of the time, Calista, but he's still a werewolf, and one that willingly placed himself in a _school_ , even after what almost happened."

"I know; and I know it's still awful even though it was an accident — it was my _dad_ , after all, how could I not be horrified by it — but _he_ was horrified by it, too, and… and when he was teaching, at least, he was taking the Wolfsbane Potion."

"Well, yes," Gerald said, unhappily and a bit forcefully, "Until he _wasn't_." He checked the pan, adding a bit more oil; it must have been heating up, because Calista caught the pleasing aroma of the herbs he'd added to the oil. "I know that you trust this man, at least to some extent, because… because he was kind to you when you were small, but... "

He fiddled with the dials again, almost nervously, and then he shook his head. "I just can't stop thinking about what you told me; about what almost happened to _you_ , and I… Calista, I'm sorry, but I think perhaps your father would be within his rights to _be_ furious."

"What?" Calista felt her mouth open slightly; she wondered if she had misheard him. "Because I'm _writing_ someone? Even if — I mean, he can't exactly maul me through the post, can he?"

"Well, he _already_ —" He stopped, mouth twisting into a frown. He seemed to think better of whatever he'd been about to say, and he shook his head again. "Never mind."

 _He already nearly mauled you_. Calista could practically hear the words, even though he had stopped short of speaking them; but _that_ , how close it had come — that was nearly her fault, as much as it was Remus', wasn't it? She'd gone out, knowing the risk; knowing what he was. And… and there had been the spell, _that spell_ , that had summoned itself into her mind, when she'd sensed the danger.

She swallowed. "I — "

She snatched up one of the spice bottles from the counter, pretending to read it. It didn't help; now that Gerald's hands were idle, she could practically feel the weight of his gaze.

 _Maybe I'm no better. I could have killed him, if I'd used that spell._ But she didn't want to tell Gerald _that_.

"I suppose I saw it — his keeping his lycanthropy secret — as something similar to my not telling anyone I had lost my Patronus," she settled for, because that was close enough to the truth, "When the dementors were at the school."

Gerald's mouth was the one that opened slightly, now; and then, suddenly, he had plucked the spice bottle straight out of her fingers, and seized both of her hands in his.

" _Mon cœur_ , you can't really think — goodness, Calista, that's not the same sort of thing _at all_."

"Isn't it?" She made herself look at him. "Both actions were — I think you said — _wildly irresponsible_."

"But _Calista_ , what your professor did was so much more than — than _irresponsible_ , don't you see that? He was given care of a castle full of teenagers and _children_ — including my _brother_ , and including you — not taking that potion could have had devastating consequences, and it very nearly did."

"As for the rest of it — the dementors…" He flushed slightly, and renewed the strength of his grip on her hands. "I — it's possible I overreacted, when you told me about your Patronus," he acknowledged, "But I was _frightened_ , I was afraid something awful would happen because you were so susceptible —" he stopped suddenly, swallowing hard.

She felt her a queer, ill sensation in her stomach; he was right, she knew he was right — and suddenly, a portion of her dream returned, as if summoned into her imagination. She saw the milky, deceptively placid surface of the lake-turned-pensieve; the shadowy figures of the dementors, gliding towards her.

She could feel their dry, cold hands, brushing against her throat — the white, bright kitchen threatened to dissolve around her, as a ring of cloaked figures closed in, rising up in its place…

"Hey," Gerald said suddenly, quietly; but his voice was faraway, and the figures were closer, fingers clawing; the black of their cloaks, the rasping of their rotting breath began to overtake her senses —

And then, there was a familiar, firm pressure on her shoulder that felt a lot more solid, a lot more real, than the fingers at her throat. His voice came again, much closer, though she thought he'd hardly moved at all. "You're with me, Calista. We're in the kitchen, and it's August the seventeenth, and you and I, we're both very safe."

 _We're not safe_ , a buzzing in her mind protested, _the dementors —_

"Can you see me, Calista? It's Gerald, and I'm right here, I'm right with you."

He squeezed her shoulder again, and then suddenly, she _could_ see him; she could see his eyes, clouded with concern behind his glasses, a small frown twisting his mouth. Behind him, the spectre of the cloaked figures dissolved and the kitchen swam back into clear view around her.

"I — I —" She made herself nod; she realised dimly that her heart was racing, and that the ragged breathing she'd been hearing was _hers_. "Yeah."

"It's Saturday," he told her, still in the same soft, even tone, "We're making dinner. You're quite safe, just now."

It took a few more breaths, a few jittering, skipping beats of her heart until she felt entirely normal, entirely grounded — and then she jerked away, feeling her face heat up. His gaze followed her, heavy with concern.

"I know where we are," she muttered, as his hand slipped from her shoulder, "I'm _fine_."

She wanted, suddenly and powerfully, to _leave_ ; she knew that he was being quite kind, and she was being unreasonable — but she also knew that he was going to reach for her again, to hold her hand, or try to hug her, or ask her what she'd seen, and her stomach curled up in protest at the thought.

Why couldn't she just be fucking _normal_ for once; why did she have to play host, always, to so many ghosts?

He took a step, and she _knew_ he was coming closer again, and her legs tensed, filled with the desire to bolt, and then —

"Calista, _mon cœur_ , can you pass me the oil, again?" His voice was light, and she realised, breath catching, that he had stepped away from her, rather than towards her; he was hovering over the stove, face turned carefully away. "I think the pan's hot enough, now."

She blinked, and took a deep breath. His face was still drawn, but his tone was even, and steady, as if everything were perfectly normal, as if the last five minutes hadn't happened.

Guarding her expression, she grabbed the oil off the counter, and brought it over to him.

"Here."

" _Merci_." The oil sizzled gently, and she could smell the herbs again, and garlic; she allowed herself to creep just a tiny bit closer, while he carefully laid the meat he'd trimmed earlier into the pan, one piece at a time.

"Terry will be pleased, when he and Mum get back," he told her, conversationally, "He loves when I make this — ah, but of course, this time I have some help, so it's bound to be even better."

He stepped over the the sink and turned the tap, washing his hands; Calista watched him, hardly daring to believe that he wasn't going to say anything else about what had happened.

"Speaking of help," he went on, once the sound of running water had subsided, "How are you coming along, with the sauce?"

"Oh." She turned away, towards the counter, and the array of spices it held; She snatched up the bowl for the sauce she'd been tasked with making, what felt like a hundred years ago. "It's — ah, it's almost done, I just need to add a few more things and stir it again."

He nodded, and returned his attention to the pan; he used a fork to check the underside of one of the pieces, and shook his head slightly, setting it back down.

"Why don't you just use your wand to sear it?" she made herself ask, suddenly quite eager to play along, and pretend that nothing had happened. That's what Aunt Narcissa does."

Gerald smiled, a bit sheepishly. "It's just not the same; honestly, in my opinion, magic's never been able to do with food what Muggle techniques can. That's why Muggle restaurants are so much better than those run my magic."

"Are they? I guess I've never noticed." Calista dropped a few sprigs of tarragon into the sauce. Unbelievably, it seemed that everything really was all right; or at least, it would be if she kept him talking about anything _but_ the visions she'd seen, the place she'd briefly gone to.

"But then," she went on, "I've only been to — what, four different restaurants in my life? Assuming that the ice cream shop in Diagon Alley counts as one."

Gerald blinked, and eyed her over his arm, while he carefully turned the meat, allowing the other side to sear.

" _Truly_?" he asked, raising his voice over the sound of cooking, "It seems I've been remiss, then, in my boyfriend duties; I should take you out more."

"Why? I like this just fine, being here with you." She realised as she said it, that she was quite sincere. She was glad, suddenly, that she hadn't run, when she'd felt the urge. "And anyway, I doubt any of those Muggle cooks are any better than you."

Gerald grinned. "I'm flattered, _mon cœur_ , believe me, but I'm not _that_ good; there are plenty of places in London and Edinburgh, just for starters, that put whatever I can do soundly to shame."

"If you say so. Is this mixed well enough yet?" She tilted the bowl of sauce towards him to check the consistency.

He placed the fork he'd used to turn the steaks into the sink, and then came over to look. He nodded, approvingly. " _Oui, mon cœur_. _C'est parfait._ "

Calista raised an eyebrow. "No it's not," she said, with a small, crooked smile — her first genuine one in what felt like days — "It's sauce."

Gerald made the funny little snorting sound he always did, when he was startled into laughter; she'd heard Amelia gently poking fun at it before, but Calista adored it, and it made her own smile grow, despite herself.

She saw him flush, and he busied himself with transferring the pan's contents to a baking dish. He added Calista's sauce, and placed the dish into the oven, adjusting one of the dials.

"I — erm." He cleared his throat, straightening, and her heart skipped again, for an entirely different reason than it had earlier. "Well, that was embarrassing."

"No, it wasn't," she said, and _now_ she wanted to be close to him, after all. She crossed the distance between them, and lifted her arms, putting them over his shoulders and pulling him close. "It was — well, frankly, _mea dulcis noctua,_ it was almost _impossibly_ cute."

His arms came gently around her waist, then; but before they settled there, he gave her a questioning look. "Is this okay, now?" he asked, quietly.

She nodded, suddenly pleased that he had thought to ask. She tightened her hold on him, drawing him even closer, and then, without realising she was going to, she kissed his cheek, and then his neck, and then she pressed her nose against the hollow of his shoulder. She smelled fresh parchment, and dittany, and something else, something she knew he would term _je ne sais quois_ , and her mouth moved, almost automatically, against his skin.

"I love you," she said, and even though it was a bit muffled, there was no mistaking that he had understood; his grip shifted, and he took her cheek in his palm, lifting her face gently towards his. He kissed her mouth, soft and tender, and not at all demanding, and then he met her gaze steadily, even if his fingers trembled, slightly, against her cheek.

"It makes me _impossibly_ happy when you say that," he murmured, "And of course, I love you, too, _mon beau colibri._ _À travers la lumière des étoiles et à travers les ombres, je t'aime._ "

The kitchen felt suddenly very warm; she could feel her pulse in her chest, in her throat, in the tips of her fingers and in her cheeks, and she could feel it very _particularly_ somewhere else, too.

"You're — you're just trying to get into my dress robes," she muttered, suddenly uncomfortable with the levity of the moment — and actually, suddenly quite willing to consider the prospect.

" _Non, mon cœur, Je suis tout à fait sincère._ "

"I — I know," she said, quietly; she wondered if he could tell, if her eyes betrayed, precisely how he was making her feel.

"Although I must admit," Gerald murmured, ducking his head slightly, so that his forehead touched hers, "That would be a very desirable side effect."

She felt her heart leap into her throat, and then dive back, somewhere much further down.

"But not here, of course." Gerald said; his fingers brushed her cheek again, and then her neck and her ear, and _oh Merlin's blood,_ it was maddeningly hot in that kitchen, how had she not yet literally melted, and why was Gerald still wearing so many goddamned clothes? "No, I think that to achieve — er, 'getting in your dress robes' —" he flushed, slightly. "I'd first have to take you somewhere you need them."

"Erm," Calista said, intelligently; she willed some of her blood to return to her brain, so she could properly work out what he was saying. He wasn't speaking French again, was he?

A sharp, dark scent hit her nose, suddenly — she scowled. It was nothing like parchment or dittany, or any of the other things she normally associated with him. "What's that?"

"Hm, _mon —_ " he tilted his head, evidently catching the same scent, and then: "Oh! The food, it's burning —"

"Oh, _Merlin_ , I forgot —"

They disentangled themselves, and Gerald threw open the oven door, snapping the dial to the 'off' position, and quickly levitated the pan out of the oven, setting it on the top.

She sniffed, experimentally; now that it was out, it didn't really smell so acrid, anymore.

"Oh, good," he said, breathing a sigh of relief. "It looks like we caught it just in time — only the sauce at the edges is _really_ burnt, see; The inside will certainly be a _bit_ overcooked, but I think only Terry will complain."

That reminded Calista that Gerald's brother Terry — and his mother — were due home any time, for dinner, and that thought freed up a bit more of her blood, to reach her head.

"I told you, though," Gerald told her, "I really _am_ an amateur, with cooking. You'll see, once we go out somewhere proper, in London, or in —"

He stopped, and tilted his head thoughtfully.

"Edinburgh," Calista reminded him, "That's what you said earlier; it's probably just within Apparating distance from where I live, too."

Gerald nodded; and then, inexplicably, his face broke into a rather sly grin. "Edinburgh is nice," he agreed, "But you know, I've just thought of somewhere else with _cuisine merveilleuse_. _Mon colibri_ , how would you feel about going a bit further?"

Calista wasn't quite certain what made her say what she did; perhaps it was his sly smile now, or his sweet words earlier, that inspired her; though, if she were being perfectly honest, it was probably the prospect of his inevitable reaction.

"Going further? I thought I was making it fairly clear a few minutes ago that I'm all for that idea."

Gerald blinked rapidly, and then his eyes went wide; his cheeks turned furiously pink.

Calista grinned. It was what he deserved, really, for the way his fingers had grazed knowingly over her ear.

"I — erm — I —" he stammered, and then, as his colour slowly began to return to normal: "You know, I've half a mind to make you wait now."

"I thought you already were."

"Ff— ah, _Merlin_ , I meant — I meant to tell you where I wanted to go!"

His entire face was red, now; Calista bit her bottom lip, afraid her face might split in two from the force of her grin if she didn't.

"I can certainly see the appeal, now," she said, "Of always trying to make me blush; but I did warn you; I'm _very_ stubborn, and now, I think, _nunc autem magister discipulo_." _The teacher has become the student._

Gerald gaped; and then, distantly, they both heard voices beyond the next room, and the click of a key in the lock.

" — for dinner, Mum? I'm _starving_."

"I don't know, dear, I was thinking perhaps — ah, actually it smells as if perhaps your brother has already made something."

Gerald and Calista both quickly found something innocuous to do; he began to set the table, while she went for the sink, to wash the dishes. She slipped her finger into her pocket, reaching for her wand —

" _Attends, mon colibri!_ "

She felt Gerald's presence at her shoulder, and then his arm snaked over hers, reaching for the tap. "No magic," he whispered, by her ear.

"Oh — right. Sorry." She was so used to using magic at home, that for a moment she'd forgotten that his mother was a Muggle.

" _C'est bon, mon cœur_." Still, he didn't move away, even though she could hear his mother and his brother in the other room, chatting and — it sounded like — setting parcels down. And then, just before she picked up the empty sauce bowl to wash it, he caught her hand up in his, lifting it to the level of her shoulder; she felt his mouth land soft and familiar on her fingers, and _then_ , breath warm against the shell of her ear:

" _Non, mon beau colibri, tu as mal compris._ "

A delightful shiver started right where his mouth was, at her ear, and ended in a place that she _really_ wished he hadn't made her think of, now that his mother was home.

" _Tu as peut-être gagné ton_ 'O.W.L.' _"_ He elaborated, spelling out the letters of the examination, in English, before adding: " _Mais le niveau 'NEWT' est très difficile._ " He mispronounced the last word slightly, in a manner that suddenly seemed very suspect...

"That — that sounds suspiciously like —"

" _La poésie? Ce serait très audacieux, c_ _omme un plan pour gagner ton cœur_."

She scowled; she could hear footsteps now, closer to the kitchen.

 _Poetry?_ He'd said, and gods be damned, it _did_ sound better in French. _That would be very daring, for a plan to win your heart_.

"Yes, it _would_ ," she muttered. ' _Impossibly_ so."

HIs mouth moved slightly, lips grazing her ear, and the shiver was back, despite herself and despite the knowledge that they were going to be interrupted, any second now.

" _Mais bien sûr_ ," he murmured, very quietly, " _Je crois que nous avons déjà établi que je pourrais être après autre chose aussi_."

It took a second for her to catch up to the translation; when she did, she felt her as if her skin had suddenly caught fire, and she knew she was going just as furiously pink as he had, earlier.

 _I think we've already established that I may be after something else, too_.

"Hey Ger," she heard, in hopeful tones, as Terry followed his voice into the kitchen, "Are we having that steak?"

"We are," Gerald said; an in an instant, he'd shifted to a much more appropriate place beside her, as if his mouth at her ear _hadn't_ just been driving her absolutely, delightfully mad.

"Although —" he said, with a sly glance towards her, "I think perhaps I may have slightly overdone it."

Calista practically choked. "Oh, you _think_ so, do you?"

It was several minutes before she trusted herself to turn around and face Gerald _or_ his family; she spent so much time, in fact, concentrating on _not_ thinking about what Gerald had said, and on ignoring the memory of his mouth on her ear, that she completely forgot to ask him where he had in mind, to take her; she finally remembered, much later, as he walked her to the Apparition spot.

"Oh," he said, when she brought it up, "Actually, I think I rather like the idea of it being a surprise, for now. See if you can get a couple of days off work next month — a Thursday and Friday, perhaps, or a Monday and Tuesday — and let me know what they are."

"Will I really need dress robes?"

"Hm. An actual dress would be better, I think; but I don't want to tell you too much, or I'll give it away. Oh, there is _one_ thing I do need to tell you, though."

"What's that?"

"You'll need international papers."

She blinked. It wasn't anywhere in the United Kingdom, then — Dublin, perhaps? But no, the British and Irish Ministries of Magic had a travel agreement, so even though she wouldn't be able to Apparate to Ireland because of the ocean in between, she wouldn't need special papers.

"Can you at least give me a hint?" she asked, fingers wrapped around her wand; she had to leave _now_ to make her curfew of ten, but her curiosity — and admittedly, that night, a few other things — had been thoroughly piqued.

Gerald's mouth stretched into a soft, coy, sort of smile.

" _Mon colibri, je suis désolé, mais je ne pense pas que je le ferai_."

Calista scowled. "Well, really," she said, "I asked for a hint, not another poem."

She lifted her wand, and Disapparated.


	4. The Dark Mark

**4\. The Dark Mark**

Calista was beginning to dread the walk to work; not to or from either Apparition point, which were both uncomfortably hot in her work clothes in the summer heat, but the shortest and what should have been the easiest portion of it: from the hospital's entrance to her actual workstation.

First, she had to weave her way through the assorted crowd near the front information desk, because she categorically was _not_ going to insert herself into a petrol station toilet first thing in the morning, even if her robes _were_ equipped with a fluid-repelling charm . Then, she had to engage in her daily verbal tug-of-war with the damned portait, all because its subject and her father had not gotten along terribly well when they were younger than she was now; and finally, she had to enter the volatile atmosphere of the potions brewing department, where there was no predicting what sort of disaster Astra was on the brink of causing, or had already caused.

Twice, she'd had to use her Freezing Charm to stop Astra from dropping porcupine quills into a potion where they would have caused an explosion; and when she missed, the second time, and got Astra instead of the cauldron, she'd been berated for nearly an hour, not only for startling her boss by putting her under the absurdly strong Freezing Charm — a feeling that Astra had described, with wrinkled nose, as 'utterly creepy, Callie, don't you dare do such a thing again!' — but _also_ for the tragic loss of her perfect blonde eyebrows and several inches of her ringlets, when the cauldron blew up anyway.

It was only two days after that horrid incident that Calista had received the owl, from Mr. Ivanforth at the Charms Committee:

 _Dear Miss Snape,_

 _I hope this owl finds you well, and that of course you are excited for the upcoming publication of your article in the Experimental Charms Journal; it's being printed as we speak and you can expect your advance copies by the first week of September, with general distribution to occur during the following week._

 _In truth, though I do wish to congratulate you once more on your achievement, I'm also writing in the hopes that I might acquire your assistance with the matter of your upcoming work for the Committee._

 _You see, I'm having quite a bit more trouble than usual getting your paperwork processed for you to be sent over to us under the terms of our contract with St. Mungo's, and no one can seem to tell me precisely what's causing the delay, though it's been made clear that it's on the hospital's end, for once, and not the Ministry's._

 _Can you offer any enlightenment, or perhaps a few gentle prods to the correct shoulder over there, so that we can get your schedule here fixed? I am certain you are as eager to assist with research as I am to have an extra pair of eyes and hands; I'm afraid Mr. Wimple is going to give us_ all _horns if we remain this short-handed, and I regret to report that I may well need to fill all of the budgeted contract hours with a healer for the remainder of the calendar year, if they cannot send you as we agreed._

 _Please do see if you can find out what's causing the delay; unless of course, you no longer wish to work with us, in which case I ask that you inform me forthwith so that I can make alternate arrangements._

 _Sincerely,_

 _Ignus I. Ivanforth  
Order of Merlin, Second Class  
Chair, Committee on Experimental Charms, Ministry of Magic_

She'd known it was a bad idea to ask Astra so soon after the eyebrow incident, but she had to try; predictably, Astra had been so insulted by Calista's request that she had utterly refused to even consider signing the paperwork for at least another week.

She recalled the hastily penned reply she'd sent back, the very same afternoon that she'd received Mr. Ivanforth's letter, lest he think that she _had_ changed her mind:

 _Dear Mr. Ivanforth,_

 _I assure you, I am most definitely still interested in working with the Committee, and I'm afraid I can tell you precisely what's causing the delay: my supervisor, Astra Shingleton, hasn't signed the work release form to allow me to work shifts outside of her department. I'm doing everything I can to get it signed as quickly as possible._

 _I've requested a meeting with the Department Head, Madam Hipworth, to see if she'll sign it in Astra's place, but she hasn't got time to see me until 8th September. I hope that you can please hold my spot at least until then; I think I've got a better chance getting her to sign it, and I really am eager to work with you._

 _Sincerely,_

 _Calista Snape_

 _P.S: Thank you again for publishing my article; I sincerely hope that I can contribute another in the near future._

There was at least one miniscule benefit to Astra's wretched treatment of her at work: the rest of the staff seemed, finally, to be coming around to her, particularly after Astra had predictably mucked up the Rapid Regrowth Reduction she'd insisted on using hospital supplies and resources to make, and had walked around for an entire day with lime-green eyebrows so long and full that they had to be combed out of her face.

That day, _Kyle Macmillan_ , of all people — the one of her coworkers whom she had been certain despised her the most — had actually brought her a Cauldron Cake at lunchtime, surreptitiously slipping it in front of the cauldron she was bent over, having been ordered to remake Astra's eyebrow solution.

"Here," he'd muttered, with a crooked, sympathetic sort of smile, "Reckon she's not going to let you out for lunch until her face is back to its perfect, horrid self."

She must have eyed him with every bit as much suspicion as she'd felt, because he'd cracked a sheepish grin in response.

"Should've expected that," he'd said, "S'pose I was a bit of an arse to you at first — but come on, I wouldn't _poison_ you, and even if I did, I suspect you'd be able to tell."

"I most certainly would," she'd shot back, "And you know — one of the techniques that's most useful in identifying invisible poisons is to look for unusual behaviour from the person providing it."

Kyle's grin had only, maddeningly, widened. "Don't remember that being on the Poisons and Antidotes exam."

"It wasn't; I learned it from my father."

Still, even despite her mistrust, Kyle — and the rest of her coworkers — had undeniably been treating her better, since that day, and her hunger had eventually overtaken her suspicion, and she'd eaten the Cauldron Cake without repercussion.

She hadn't heard back from Mr. Ivanforth again, but she reasoned that he was undoubtedly a very busy man, and that no further news had to be good news — after all, he wouldn't give her spot away without warning her first, would he?

She _was_ hopeful that Madam Hipworth would hear her out, and she had compiled a list of her most notable achievements since beginning her work in the Potions Brewing Department in the hopes that it would persuade the Department Head to act over Astra's head; she noted each of the explosions she'd helped to prevent, and the more complex potions she'd made, including an Antidote to a Death Cap Draught that, she'd heard, had been provided just in the nick of time.

Since receiving Mr. Ivanforth's letter, Calista's work troubles had at least moved to take up such a significant portion of her capacity to worry that her mind hardly had time to drive her mad with everything _else_ that was still weighing on her, at least while she was awake. Maddeningly, though, no one else seemed to share Calista's concern; Gerald was predictably optimistic that Astra would cave soon under pressure from the Committee, and Amelia's suggestion that she threaten to curse Astra if she didn't sign wasn't exactly practical _or_ helpful.

Most irritating to Calista was that her _family_ didn't seem to care, either; both Severus and her Uncle Lucius had outright dismissed her concerns when she'd brought them up, and Uncle Lucius had even said he was "certain it would be seen to" in such an offhand manner that Calista was nearly certain he hadn't even been listening to what she'd said.

She was so busy, in fact, internally cursing both her uncle and her father for not taking her concerns seriously, that she quite literally _collided_ with another one of her family members a few days later in a most unexpected place: in the hospital cafeteria, on the first lunch break she'd taken in a week.

" _Oof —_ pay attention where you're — oh it's _you_! Wotcher, 'cuz! _"_

" _Tonks_? _"_ Calista managed, while attempting not to reveal that her heart had instinctively started beating double-time at the unexpected contact, "What are you doing here? You haven't been hurt, have you?"

She looked her cousin over quickly, but she _looked_ fine, though her hair was a startlingly normal mouse-brown shade.

"Nah, I'm right as rain — here on _official_ business, actually, which I've been trying to tell you for the past week and a half — you've not been avoiding me, have you?"

"No," Calista said, a bit guiltily, because aside from replying to a couple of owls, she'd been doing more or less exactly that since what she now considered the disastrous sleepover at her cousin's house, "Of course not, I'm just busy — work, and all."

"Right," Tonks said, and Calista got the distinct impression that her cousin didn't quite believe her, "Well, Mum would say you should never get too busy for your family, but it happens, I suppose."

"Erm. Sorry." Calista glanced over her cousin's shoulder, to the growing food line. She was starving, but she'd just left an infusion simmering, and she had to be back to check it within fifteen minutes. She opened her mouth to tell her cousin that, when Tonk's arm came down heavily around her shoulders, in a familial manner.

"So, are you going to ask me my big news, or what?"

"Oh. Of course. What's your big news?"

Tonks rolled her eyes. "You weren't even going to ask. Merlin's pants, cuz, I'm _official_!"

"Erm — huh?"

"Official! I'm officially an Auror! Passed my exams in the August round, almost two weeks ago now. Got my badge and everything, look —"

"Oh!" Calista grinned, probably the first time she had since the last time she'd seen Gerald, at the weekend, "That's fantastic! Congratulations!"

She inspected the badge, while her cousin filled her in on the exam — she'd scored top marks in Disguise, naturally, which didn't surprise Calista in the least, since she hadn't even noticed her cousin hiding in the crowd at her graduation ceremony, at first.

"'Course I got assigned the most boring patrol duty — Moody says it's always like that when you're freshly minted, it'll be a while before I get to do anything interesting."

"Moody?" Calista echoed, "As in Mad-Eye Moody?"

"Yep. The one and only; he's been my mentor for most of my training."

Calista felt a sudden hollow twist in her gut; she knew _that_ name — her mother had cursed it nearly as often as she'd cursed Albus Dumbledore. It was stupid, because of course by now she knew that her mother had been a liar, but the name still gave her an unnatural chill, still made her feel as if she were being watched, or as if she were about to be snatched up and abused at any moment —

"So you _are_ coming, right? You have to."

She realised her cousin was waiting for an answer; she suppressed a flush of embarrassment, and another shiver.

"Erm, yeah, of course." Belatedly, she realised she had no idea what she'd just agreed to. "Just — remind me again, where to go…?"

Tonks rolled her eyes, again. "Knew you weren't paying attention," she muttered, good-naturedly, "Thinking about that hippogriff boyfriend of yours again, were you?"

"Huh— _hey!_ He's _not_ a hippogriff —"

"I know, I know; he's a Ravenclaw. Same difference, if you ask me — both so bloody _aloof_ — no, I'm joking, of course your particular Ravenclaw isn't so bad, it's just the rest of them — and anyway, you can't back out now, you've already just said you'd come to my party. It's Monday night, we're going to listen to the Quidditch World Cup —"

Calista groaned. "Is that really what I agreed to? I hate Quidditch."

Tonks gaped. "How can you hate _Quidditch_? You used to come watch the Gryffindor practise with me —"

"That was mostly because of the hot chocolate."

"All right, fair enough, but you _dated_ a Quidditch player for like, two years — ah, wait, I can see now why you'd hate it." Tonks nodded sympathetically, and then: "Well, come anyway; I'll have snacks. Hot chocolate, even."

"In August?"

"Cold chocolate, then; Calista, I won't take 'no' for an answer; you're coming, and you're staying the night. I'll even Apparate into work with you on Tuesday, I'm going to be scheduled here for at least a month, Moody says."

She considered; even though she'd thoroughly embarrassed herself, and even though she really couldn't care less about Quidditch these days… it occurred to her that there was something she'd been worrying over for _weeks_ now that Tonks — or, more specifically, Tonk's father, Ted — might well be able to help her with.

"I don't suppose your dad would be able to help me with something, if I _do_ come over? I need to buy something, tickets for a Muggle play that Gerald wants to see, they're for his birthday, only I've _no idea_ how to go about buying things with Muggle money… or actually, where to even _get_ Muggle money, come to think of it…"

"'Course Dad can help; what's the play? I'll have him get them before you even come, you can just pay him back."

"I… actually, I don't remember the name of it, I'll have to ask Gerald again. Something about tall people, or something — ah, shit, it's already two, now I've _really_ got to be getting back — I haven't even eaten, and I have to check my infusion —"

" _Accio ham sandwich!_ There, now you have lunch." Calista gaped, as Tonks pushed the technically stolen sandwich into Calista's hands, "Oh, don't make that face, look at him, you definitely need the sandwich more than he does — _joking_ , 'cuz, I'm gonna buy him a replacement, Merlin's balls, your _face_! Go on, then. I'll see you Monday."

"I never said I was definitely going to go, you know."

"Actually," Tonks said brightly, "You did. And anyway —" she glanced around; no one was watching them, except for the plump man whose sandwich she'd just stolen straight off his tray. Tonks lowered her voice and leaned in closer. "Mum got another letter from Sirius; turns out he remembers you, too."

" _What?_ You — I mean —" she lowered her voice to a hissed whisper, feeling a chill of trepidation along her spine. "He _mentioned_ me?!"

"Well, Mum sort of said what you'd told us, last time — we, uhm, didn't really tell him about your Dad though, Mum says they weren't exactly friends in school —"

"That's the understatement of the century."

"So anyway, we just said that we were in touch with you, y'know, that you were doing well and — and that you remembered him rescuing you, and he remembers that, too; I think he even gave Mum a note for you."

" _What?_ "

"Couldn't owl it to you, obviously — he's got to be real careful who he sends birds to, the Ministry's still got about a million eyes out for him _and_ on people they think he might be getting in touch with — but Mum can show it to you on Monday when you come over."

"I…" _We'll see_ , Calista wanted to say again, now more than ever; she felt her heart pounding against her chest, and her stomach knotted up so thoroughly that she was beginning to think the sandwich would be a waste. She was still having nightmares about Sirius Black, for Merlin's sake… she didn't actually want to be in contact with him, did she?

She recalled, with a sharp and sudden clarity, her dream, and what she'd wanted to ask him, then: _How did you escape?_ And, _Could she do it, too?_

Tonks was looking at her funny, now, and the man whose sandwich she was holding was striding purposefully towards them, and suddenly it all felt like too much.

"I — erm, I have to go check on my infusion."

"Hang on, I haven't told you what time —"

Calista ducked her head, and hurried away

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Gerald aimed his wand nervously at the wireless on the little table next to Calista's bed to change the station, and reminded himself for the hundredth time in a row not to seem too eager _or_ too clueless; and then he found his eyes sliding to the lace at the edge of her bra, and realised that he'd failed, again, in at least one regard and he didn't even care. He set his wand down, and reached for her with one hand, fumbling clumsily with his own buttons with the other.

" _Mon colibri_ ," he murmured, drawing at whatever reserves of confidence and mental strength he had to at least _appear_ as if he knew what he was supposed to be doing. " _Tu es trop belle pour les mots_."

She laughed, softly and nervously, and _that_ made Gerald feel a little bit less nervous, himself.

"And yet," she murmured, and her fingers came up to help him, working the buttons on his shirt much more deftly than he was doing, "You always seem to find some."

Still, despite the sureness of her fingers, he heard her breath catch as she pushed his shirt back off of his shoulders. He suppressed the instinctual assumption that it was a _bad_ sound, that she had noticed his scars and was repulsed by them, and told himself firmly that she already knew, that she'd told him at least a dozen times already that she _wasn't_ bothered by them.

As if she knew he needed the reassurance — she probably did, he probably _had_ winced, despite himself — her fingers began to caress exactly the parts he was self-conscious about, tracing over his skin like it was the index of her favourite book, and suddenly he couldn't worry about whether he was too eager — he slid his hands over her stomach, and over the blue-and-black lace of her bra, and tried to decide if it would be less humiliating to ask _her_ to remove it, or to fumble like an idiot with the clasp again, like he had the last time. He'd meant to ask Chadwick if there was a trick; why hadn't he remembered to ask Chadwick?

 _Because asking Chadwick would require admitting to him that you're almost nineteen and you haven't figured any of this out, yet_ , he reminded himself; he was quite certain, from listening to his cousins and his roommates, that he was supposed to know what he was doing by now, and that, sooner or later, Calista was going to figure out that he _didn't_ , at least not when it came to touch and action instead of poems and letters _._ He'd read books, of course, and he'd thought he was prepared, but this was a practical examination, and he had always, _always_ done better on the written portion…

He leaned closer, and pressed his lips to the side of her neck, inhaling her perfume, and he remembered that he did know at least one thing to do… he slid his mouth a little higher, behind her ear, and _then_ , oh _Merlin_ , her fingers suddenly found the bottom of the page, and began to trail slowly past his navel, towards the waistband of his trousers and —

"Eugh, Gerald, what is _that_?"

He leapt back, feeling his face flush as furiously red as it had ever been. "I — I'm sorry, I can't help it, it's just — _you're_ just — oh."

When he dared to meet her gaze, he registered _first_ the look of disgust, and, a fraction of a second later, the fact that it was directed at the wireless beside the bed, rather than at him.

"The… huh? What's what?" he managed, hoping she didn't realise what he'd initially thought she'd been offended by.

She wrinkled her nose, as if the wireless had personally affronted her; he tilted his head, and frowned. It was a good song; one of his favourites — in fact, it was one of the ones he'd planned on putting on, when he took her abroad, hopefully after he'd worked up the nerve to ask Chadwick at least some of the hundred-odd questions he had, so that he wouldn't end up disappointing her or hurting her or any of the other things he was worried about.

" _That_ ," she said, sneering at the wireless again, "That rubbish coming out of the speakers — what is _that_ supposed to be?"

"It's… erm, it's New Wizards on the Block," he said, cautiously, "You… don't like it?"

"No," she said, vehemently, "I _don't_. It sounds stupid."

"Oh. I can —" damn it, now he was thoroughly rattled, "Erm. What should I put on, then?"

"Not this."

"Obviously. What do you like?" he pressed, reaching quickly for his wand; perhaps it wasn't too late, perhaps if he changed it quickly enough, they could go back to where they'd been and he could figure out what he was supposed to do about the damn bra. Why did they make them so bloody _complicated_?

"I don't know, _good_ music." she said, and then, after a moment: "Evanesco. Nine Inch Wands. Alice in Chainmail."

Gerald felt _his_ nose wrinkle, now. Suddenly, it seemed absurd that he didn't know this about her, that despite everything _else_ they'd talked about over the years, they had never discussed music before. "Seriously? _That's_ what you like? But it's so… I don't know, so _dark_. Doesn't it make you sad to listen to stuff like that?"

"It's not _dark_ , it's… it's _honest_ , it makes me feel like I'm not the only one that has problems — and anyway, at least it's realistic, not like — eugh, what did he just say? ' _I count the blessings that keep our love new_?' I think I might vomit."

"It's…" he felt himself flush again. This was wrong, this was all wrong; she was only _pretending_ to hate romantic things all the time, wasn't she? "I can find something else. Boyz to Wizards, maybe…"

If anything, her expression got darker.

"There's no _way_ I'm taking my clothes off to _that_ rubbish," she said. Gerald blinked, and then — as quick as he could, he shut the wireless off.

He still intended on following through with his plan, of course, on making everything as perfect as he possibly could, for their first time… but there was an awful lot of ground, still — figuratively, and, since he'd come up with the idea of taking her abroad, literally — between where they were and where they were ultimately going, and hadn't she been more or less inviting him to explore, recently?

He set his wand down, and moved closer to her, pressing his palms to her shoulders, and his mouth to her neck — he slid his hands around, behind her back, fingers questing towards the tiny metal puzzle that he knew was nestled amid all that tantalising lace —

But she was quiet, and she wasn't kissing him back, or touching him, the way that she usually did once this particular sort of journey got underway.

He stopped, and frowned, eyeing her carefully. "Calista? Something's wrong, isn't it?"

She looked briefly startled, and then she slipped backwards out of his grasp, pressing her back to the headboard, and pulling her knees up to her chest, and then he was _certain_ there was something wrong, despite her next words:

"No. Just the stupid music, and work, and — and I suppose I'm not really… I don't know."

He pulled his shirt back on, hurriedly, not bothering with buttoning it, and then he scrambled into place beside her, reaching for her hands and her shoulder, simultaneously.

"What is it?" he asked, trying not to focus on the fact that it turned out he had a _very_ nice vantage point from here, over her shoulder. "Have you been having nightmares, again?"

"No. I mean, yes, but that's not…"

He felt the tension in her body, immediately, and he knew she was considering withdrawing, getting up and crossing the room. He waited, patiently, for her to decide whether distance was really what she needed. After a moment, she settled back down, leaning some of her weight against his side.

"All right," he said quietly, once she was still again, and he squeezed her hands gently with one of his, resettling the other around her shoulders. He made himself look at the top of her head, instead of — well, it was obviously better not to think about that, now. "What _is_ it, then?"

She looked at him, and for an instant, he could see the dark cloud of worry in her eyes, the little wrinkle it made in her forehead, the way it pulled down the corners of her mouth — and then, just as quickly, her expression cleared, and she shook her head.

"Nothing," she said, and if this had been two years ago, even _one_ year ago, he would have been fooled by her even tone, and the tiny, wry smile she turned on him, now. "It's just, I accidentally promised Tonks I'd go to her house to — to listen to the Quidditch Cup, and I really don't want to."

She was undeniably a very skilled Occlumens; there was no indication of her duress in her face or in her inflection, but there were other things he had learned to pick up on; the barest trembling of her breath, the way her shoulders and her neck tightened up; and her fingers were cold. They were always cold, when she was upset.

"I'm certain that's true," he said, "But I'm equally certain that's not what's really bothering you."

She flicked a glance at him that was too quick, too guarded for him to even attempt to interpret.

"Since when do you know how to perform legilimency?" she muttered; Gerald felt a sharp little twist in his gut. _Legilimency._ For some reason, the word reminded him of his father, of what Calista had used the very art to uncover, and of what was coming, sooner than he was prepared for, and yet _also_ not soon enough to put it behind him any time in the reasonable future.

"I don't," he said, as evenly as he could, "But I know _you_. I can usually tell when something's upsetting you, and right now I can tell that it's something a bit more weighty than Quidditch."

She lifted her eyes to his again, and this time, there was something crushingly believable about the wry, self-deprecating smile that twisted her mouth into a shape he thought it had no business having. "Something's _always_ bothering me, isn't it? Nearly every time you see me, isn't that right?"

He frowned, choosing his words carefully. "I certainly wouldn't go that far," he settled for, "And I suspect that often, it's the _same_ something, or the same few somethings, that you're worried about."

He felt the sharp twist in his gut again; there'd been a point he wanted to make, but he'd lost it somewhere around the moment when he'd realised he was talking about himself, too. _He_ was always worried about the same few things, and lately, he'd stopped himself from bringing any of them up nearly every time he was with her, because… well, because he didn't feel the worry, or the fear, so acutely when they were together, and because they hadn't exactly had a shortage of distractions, lately. But, still, there were ghosts, both old and new; there was the constant spectre of his father, there were the haunting implications in the runic writings that kept appearing at the office, owled in from mysterious sources; and there was the way he'd been feeling, more and more often, when he was alone…

"Calista?" he said, suddenly, "Can you do me a favour? It's… it's probably going to sound a bit odd."

She blinked, pulling back slightly to look at him with an expression of mild puzzlement. "Of course. What is it?"

He took a deep breath, and hoped she wouldn't take this the wrong way.

"Can you lie down with me?" he asked, "I promise I won't try anything — ah, anything like what we were doing earlier."

She acquiesced, much easier and with much less questioning than he'd expected; he wriggled and shifted, adjusting his arms, and then —

It was perfect; it was exactly as he'd imagined, easily a hundred times, only infinitely better because now he was holding _her_ instead of his pillow, and he could press his nose to the crown of her head, instead of the hair ribbon that, if he were being perfectly honest, had long since lost the scent of her.

"Oh, _fuck_ ," Gerald heard himself mutter, possibly only the second time he had failed to suppress such language in front of her, as something that had been holding tight in the middle of his chest for longer than he cared to admit finally broke free; he realised, as he pressed his mouth to her hair, that he was _crying_ , suddenly. "I — I really needed…"

"Gerald? What's wrong?" He felt her breath, warm against his neck, as she squirmed, trying to get a look at his face, but just now…

"Please, _mon colibri_ , I just — is this all right, for a few minutes?"

She nodded; he felt the tickle of it at his chin, and he kissed her hair again. How, exactly, was he supposed to find the love songs she evidently hated anything other than — what had she said they weren't, _realistic_? He was anxious, and he was hurting, and there was no doubt that she was, too, even if she didn't want to talk about it; but when he held onto her like this, he knew that neither one of them would have to face their fears alone; what could be more beautiful, more meaningful, and more _realistic_ than that?

It was hard to imagine, _now_ , even with his eyes burning and his mind racing, that any of the horrible things contained in the scrolls of runes locked away in his desk at work were any match for the particular rune he held in his arms, but there were other omens he'd received through the post: court dates and requests for notarised affidavits, and it was hard not to feel like it was all an elaborate, wretched sort of foreshadowing.

"I'm worried about October," he finally said, tightly, over her head. "I'm afraid something will go wrong, that the evidence won't be good enough, or my testimony won't be good enough, or that even if it _is_ , he'll find some loophole, some… some way to keep hurting us. To get at Mum, or Terry."

Calista wriggled slightly, and reluctantly he loosened his grip, but she didn't go far. She tilted her head up, not enough to look at him properly, just enough to be heard.

"I'm worried about that, too," she admitted, quietly, "But if anything _does_ go wrong, Gerald, that just means we keep trying find a way to set it right."

He managed a weak smile. "You're sweet," he said, "But I don't want to drag you through this forever — you've done more than enough…"

She perked her head up a bit further, and fixed him with a look that made him suddenly a lot more confident, and particularly glad that she was on _his_ side.

"You are clear on my stance, when it comes to some arsehole hurting someone I care about, yes?"

He swallowed, remembering all at once why he had _first_ thought of her as _colibri_ , as a rune of protection. Had he already been in love with her, in some small way, even back then? It was beginning to seem possible. "Remind me, again?"

"When he _stops_ ," she practically growled, "When he's afraid to even _think_ about hurting you again — _that's_ when I've done enough."

" _Mon colibri courageux; mon colibri féroce_. I —" Gerald swallowed a lump of something hot and hard; he thought vaguely that it might have been his heart.

"You know, until I told you, no one's ever been angry with him before, for… for the things he did. No one except _me_ , anyway. I was angry, I still _am_ angry, for Mum and for Terry, and for _myself_ , for all of it, but everyone else… they're sad, or they feel guilty, but no one's ever gotten _angry_ like I have, and I... I think I was always afraid there was something wrong with me, for feeling that way…"

Oh, _Merlin_ , it felt good to say that; hadn't he been afraid, nearly his whole goddamn life, that his natural response, his internal _anger_ at the situation, had been inherited directly from the man he felt it towards? Wasn't that precisely _why_ he tried so hard to be so even-tempered all the time?

"Really?" his _colibri_ asked, and he nodded, feeling the last of his tears drying up, at last. It always helped, talking to her; he hoped that he helped her even half as much.

"I think — you know, I think that's what bothers me about Uncle Lucius," she said, quietly, practically into the curve of his neck; he had to strain to hear her. "Everyone else… _everyone_ else that knows anything about… about what she did… they're some mix of angry and sad — some more one way than the other — but with him, it's always just like…"

She tilted her head up, again. "You know, I always wonder, just a little bit, if maybe he doesn't believe me; if he doesn't believe what happened, because when it comes up, it always seems like it's… I don't know, _inconvenient_ for him to acknowledge it."

"Oh, I'm certain it is," Gerald said quietly; he'd thought a lot about a similar dynamic, truth be told, with his cousins, his aunts and uncles, even his primary school teachers. "Because, you know — if he admits it really happened, then he's got to take some responsibility for _letting_ it happen, doesn't he?"

She went quiet again, and he was afraid he might have said the wrong thing, and made her feel worse; but when he tried to loosen his grip and bend down to look at her face, she shifted again, pressing herself closer to him, this time; and then her words came again, small and slightly muffled, breath warm on his skin.

"It's funny you say that," she said, and then, a bit clearer, as she shifted her face an inch or so: " _Responsibility_. Because it's… it's basically what _he_ said, when he found out what she was doing, when he saw her…"

Gerald felt himself frown; there was something odd about the way she'd phrased that.

"You're not talking about your father, are you?"

He felt her head move against his chin. "No. I'm talking about _him_. Sirius Black. I guess I've been thinking about _that night_ a lot lately, and..." He felt her take another breath. "I think that — 'responsibility', I mean — might've been the word he used, even, for why he was taking me — _helping me_ , but I didn't think so at the time."

"Why do you suppose you've been thinking about that night more, lately?" he asked, cautiously.

He hoped she wasn't still communicating with the werewolf; the idea made him almost unbearably nervous — but one thing he knew for certain by now was that Calista would never take anyone _else's_ input on who she should and should not talk to, and perhaps it was wrong of him to hold that against her; after all, hadn't he benefited from precisely that quality in her, at Flint's expense, all those years ago? Wasn't that part of the reason that he was holding her, now, in this perfect way?

"Well," she said, every bit as carefully as he just had, "I suppose it's because he — erm, apparently, he's written me a letter."

"Another —" he paused, and realised that she might not mean the werewolf, after all. "Wait, who's written you a letter?"

" _Him._ Sirius Black. Or at least, he remembers me, and he's written me _something_. Tonks told me on Wednesday. Her mother has it."

All at once, Gerald understood her earlier dark look, the persistent chill in her fingers; most of all, he understood why she was so reluctant to go to her family's house on Monday, and as he'd suspected, it had nothing at all to do with Quidditch.

"Hm. I suppose you don't have to read the letter, if you don't want to."

"That's just the thing, though. What if I... what if I _do_ want to? And I'm not certain I do, either, it's just… I'm not certain I don't."

"What are the reasons you think you might want to?" Gerald asked, reasonably, "And what are the reasons you may _not_ want to?"

"Well, that part's easy," Calista said, and then she lowered her voice, so that he had to strain, once more, to hear her. "Dad would have my head, if he had the faintest idea I was even _considering_ it — I think he hates _him_ even more than he hates Remus. And _I_ don't exactly forgive him for what happened with my father."

Gerald felt a stab of bewildered irritation. "Wait a minute. You just told me last weekend that you've more or less forgiven the — erm, Remus — for that, but you're still holding it against Black? That doesn't even make s—"

"I've more or less forgiven the — _what_?" Calista interrupted, acidly, and he wasn't fool enough to approach the sudden sharp edge of her voice.

"I — erm, sorry, I was going to say the professor," he improvised quickly, "Then I remembered you're calling him by his name…"

"Oh." She frowned, evidently satisfied with his answer; he let go of a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding. "It's obvious, isn't it? Remus didn't know about the plan; he didn't nearly k — erm, hurt — my dad on _purpose_. Sirius Black did. It was his idea."

Gerald exhaled. He could see what she was saying — he _could_ , really — but the truth was, he wasn't really thinking about what had nearly happened to her father, so many years ago — he was still thinking about what the werewolf had nearly done to _her_ , what could have happened to his brother, or to any other student that happened to be out of bounds that night, and if something _had_ happened… if Calista _or_ Terry had wound up hurt, or infected, or _worse_ , what would it matter if the man had done it _intentionally_ or not?

"All right," he said, a bit more crisply than he had intended, "What about the other side of it, then? Why might you _want_ to read this letter?"

"Seriously? Do you really need to ask that?"

The irritation was back; Merlin, she could be thorny. He exhaled, again, reminding himself not to take it personally.

 _Obviously_ , he thought. _Wouldn't have asked otherwise, would I?_

"Sorry," he said, instead, as evenly as he could, "I'm just trying to help you work it out, all right? I thought, if you said the reasons for and against, perhaps it would make the decision easier…"

It was her turn to exhale; she sighed, and nodded, against his chin again.

"I know," she said quietly, suddenly — miraculously — contrite. "I just… I hate saying it, you know? But I want… I mean, if I read the letter, I can… maybe he'll have said, or maybe I can write back and ask him him how…"

She stopped; he felt her body tense again, and she shivered in a _particular_ way, a trembling that wracked her entire body, but it didn't make any _sense_ , she usually only got that way when it was about —

"I need to know if she can… get out the same way."

 _Shit._ Of _course_ she wanted to ask Sirius Black how he had escaped; she had to know whether it was possible for her mother to use the same tricks, didn't she? He should have realised that; he shouldn't have been the thick arsehole that made her spell it out.

" _Mon cœur,_ I'm sorry. Of course that's why…" He sighed. "He definitely _is_ innocent, yes? Of… of the things he was imprisoned for, at least? We know that for certain?"

"Even my Dad said it was true."

Gerald nodded, drawing a breath. And then, decisively: "I think you _should_ ask him, then; or have your aunt do it, if you're comfortable asking her and if you don't want to be in direct communication with him."

She pulled away slightly, and gaped. "You _do_? I was certain you were going to try and talk me out of it…"

"I probably should," he agreed, uneasily; suddenly, he was acutely aware of how undoubtedly _furious_ her father would be with him, if he ever learned what advice he had just given her — but _he_ was an Occlumens too, even if he probably wasn't nearly as good as Calista was, and he didn't see any particular reason why her father ever had to know about this particular conversation.

"I'd really prefer your dad never found out I said this," Gerald cautioned, just in case that wasn't clear, "But you're really only gathering more information, right, and what's the harm in that? It's better to know as much as possible, isn't it?"

She considered. And then: "I suppose you're right. I mean — the best case scenario would be finding out that whatever he did isn't something she could —" Her voice faltered, and he squeezed her shoulder, reflexively.

"That's probably what he's going to say," Gerald said quietly, partly because he hoped it were true nearly as desperately as _she_ did, but also partly because he'd realised that it was sometimes easier for her to stay focused, and grounded in the present, if he reminded her that that was where she was.

"But even if — if there were something… even if something awful were about to happen," she said, in the small voice that always made him wish he'd perfected his Armour Charm already, so he could wrap it around her, "I guess it would be… it would be better to know, than to just pretend it's _not_ going to happen, wouldn't it?"

Gerald felt a sudden, awful pull somewhere in his insides; for a moment, he saw his father, towering over him, the spectre of the hundred cold, alien faces of the Wizengamot, looking down on a scrawny kid that just wanted to protect his family, and didn't quite know how; and when he forced that aside, he saw the heavy, twisting forms of runes on dusty, tattered scrolls — runes he'd had to look up in books that even the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts Library wouldn't hold, runes that described unthinkable horrors: mangled creatures, unexplained legions of dead rats, and the corpse of a unicorn that had been bled dry...

 _It's got to be another of those mad, creepy fairy tales_ , Mira had said, looking to _him_ for confirmation, as if he wasn't the newest addition to the office, as if he had any real idea. _This can't be… these can't be about something that's really happening, can they?_

Calista shifted in his arms again, and that brought _Gerald_ back, this time; he tucked her head back under his chin, and pressed his mouth to her hair.

 _It would be better to know, than just to pretend it's not going to happen…_

"It's going to be all right," Gerald said quietly. He had to believe that, after everything that _both_ of them had already been through. How much more could either of them really be expected to bear?

He tightened his hold on her, again, sternly quieting his body's physical response to her shape, her closeness, the warmth of her skin. That sort of thing — it was nice, but it wasn't what either of them seemed to need, just now.

He inhaled the scent of new books and apple blossom and _girl_ , and he tried to stop thinking about his father; he tried to stop thinking about the trial; and perhaps most of all, he tried to stop thinking about the scrolls that had come in from Albania.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Ted and Andromeda were so warm and welcoming when Calista arrived at their home on Monday evening for Tonks' party that she immediately felt a rush of guilt for avoiding them.

They were in particularly high spirits to be celebrating their daughter's new status as a fully-fledged Auror, and Ted, at least, was also keen to celebrate the relatively safe — or as Tonks called it, _boring_ — detail that she'd been assigned.

Tonks mentioned that she had invited a few friends that would be by in a bit, mostly people that Calista vaguely knew from school, though they were all a couple of years older than her, and none of them had been in Slytherin. Tonks _was_ slightly put out, however, that Charlie Weasley had declined her invitation.

"'Course he has a damn good excuse," her cousin had said, good-naturedly, "Bastard got tickets to be there live."

"So did Draco and his parents," Calista had reported, "Aunt Narcissa said I could have gone with them if I wanted, but I'd rather fight a dragon than watch another bloody Quidditch match — erm, no offense," she'd added, quickly, because she'd registered belatedly that the entire house was bedecked in shamrocks in support of the Irish team.

"Should've taken the ticket and given it to me," Tonks said, wistfully, "Reckon I could've impersonated you well enough for a few hours, if it gave me the chance for a close-up view of Aidan Lynch. And speaking of dragons — doesn't Lynch look a bit like Charlie Weasley, from a distance?"

"I honestly have no idea," Calista said, who wouldn't know _any_ of the Irish players from a house-elf. "I thought you were over him, though? Charlie, I mean."

"I was. I mean, I am; it's just, _Merlin_ , it's been ages since I've gotten —" she caught her mother's eye and grinned innocently. "Well, anyway, it'd be nice to see an old friend again."

As it turned out, Ted was also more than happy to help Calista with getting tickets to the play, just as Tonks had assured her he would be.

"Oh, theatre tickets?" he'd asked, keenly, when she brought it up, "Excellent idea — and this Gerald fellow appreciates the arts, eh? I'm happy to help. What's the play?"

Calista knew she wouldn't remember, so she'd come prepared; she withdrew a scrap of parchment from her pocket, and read off what she'd written down, the last time she'd managed to get Gerald talking about the play, again.

"It's called 'Three Tall Women'," she reported, "It just won the — er, I think this says 'Pumpernickel Prize', and it's opening in October in the West End."

Ted chuckled. "I believe you mean 'Pulitzer Prize', my dear — and yes, it's going to be opening at Wyndhams Theatre, if I recall correctly. Tickets might be a bit pricey, though, if you're looking for decent seats — Dame Maggie Smith's starring in the new production, and there's quite a bit of hype."

"I think Gerald said something about that. Maggie whatever. How much is 'pricey', anyway? I mean — how much do theatre tickets cost?"

Ted gaped. "Maggie 'whatever'? My dear, how can you not know who _Maggie Smith_ is? Goodness, what are they teaching in Muggle Studies these days?"

"Well, I didn't take it, so I wouldn't know."

"Ah, right, the Slytherins never do, do they?" Ted shrugged, though she thought he looked slightly reproachful. "Neither did Dromeda. I always say, it should be required, at least for those that don't have some exposure to the Muggle world already — but that's neither here nor there, I suppose. Ticket prices… if you want to go opening week, you've got to buy soon, and I'd expect to pay close to thirty-five pounds each for mid-range seats, perhaps up to seventy for the really good ones."

"Erm." Calista blinked. She'd gotten Muggle money from her father a few times to take the bus before she could Apparate, but she had never thought to ask him where it had come from, or how much it was worth.

"How much is that in real money? And do I have to go all the way to Gringott's to change it?"

Ted sighed; he seemed slightly disappointed that she didn't know. "I can get it changed for you. In wizarding money, it's seven Galleons, roundabout, for the mid-range," he said, "Maybe fourteen or fifteen for the best seats. Each."

"Oh. Well, that's not too bad." The price of two tickets, actually, wouldn't be a terrible amount more than she'd spent on the Charms book she'd given him for Christmas, the one she'd found at the collector's shop, and though she'd had to save for _ages_ to afford that, she had a job now. She probably had that much money at home, without even having to go to the bank and withdraw it from her account. "Can you get two of the better tickets, then, if I owl you the money tomorrow?"

Ted nodded. "Of course, my dear. I think you'll like the play; it's gotten very good reviews. Might pick up a few tickets for Dromeda and I as well, actually — different performance, of course. I wouldn't want to interfere with your date."

She caught Tonks' raised eyebrows, and frowned. "What?"

"Nothing, just — isn't thirty Galleons a bit steep for a birthday present?"

Calista shrugged. "I got him a limited-printing book for Christmas that was twenty-two, and really, they pay me pretty well to put up with Astra — Kyle Macmillan told me we get more for starting pay in Potions than in any other department, just because no one would stay otherwise. Besides, it's not like Dad makes me pay rent."

"Well, shit," Tonks said, with an impish grin. "Firewhiskey's on you next time, then."

A few minutes after that, Tonks' friends showed up, and they put the Quidditch match on the wireless, and poured drinks. Calista's stomach heaved in anticipation when she was offered a shot of firewhiskey, but she accepted a butterbeer, instead.

They all cared a _lot_ more about the Quidditch match than Calista did, and so it was easy for her to slip out, into the kitchen. As if her Aunt Andromeda had sensed the reason why she'd separated from the crowd, she followed her in a few minutes later; Calista saw that she had a sheet of folded parchment in her hand.

"Dora said she told you that we heard from Sirius again," her aunt said, very quietly, so that no one from the sitting room would overhear; with the loud whoops of Tonks' friends and the excited warble of the announcer, Calista didn't think there was much chance of that happening, even if her aunt had been shouting.

Calista nodded, tightly. "She — she said he… uhm, that he remembered me."

Andromeda smiled slightly, and a bit sadly. "Yes; here, I'll let you see what he's written."

She handed the parchment over, though Calista noticed that she stayed close enough to read it along with her, or perhaps to shield ti from view of anyone who happened to walk into the kitchen, in search of a snack or another drink. Calista set her butterbeer down on the counter, and read the letter, in its entirety.

Most of it didn't pertain to her at all; there were assurances that he was well-hidden, and that he was staying alert; he mentioned that he'd written to Harry and that he seemed to be doing well enough. Calista could only imagine that he must mean Harry Potter, whose father even _she_ knew had been close friends with Sirius, at school; seeing the reminder of that, in writing, made her stomach tighten uncomfortably. Her father really _would_ be furious if he knew what she had come here to read…

He asked after Tonks — _Little Nymphadora,_ he called her, and Calista knew Tonks must've wrinkled her nose at that; and then, heart racing, she found the part of the letter, near the bottom, where he mentioned _her_.

 _Of course I remember Bellatrix's little daughter. Who could forget seeing a child so small that had been so horribly scarred?_

It took Calista a moment to realise that he meant _emotionally_ , that of course he didn't know — did he — about what Bellatrix had done to her, in the midst of a dark ritual, with a wicked flash of silver that she still saw, sometimes, in her nightmares.

She took a breath, and read on.

 _Poor, terrified little thing she was, but who could blame her? I sometimes think, even after hearing my cousin — your lovely sister — rant endlessly in her cell about all the mad things she's done, that the things she did to that child of hers were the worst of them all. The dementors make you relive every terrible thing you've ever seen, every one of your darkest thoughts, and I can't tell you how many times I've heard that little girl scream while I was in there. Probably almost as many times as I've seen baby Harry reaching up for parents that aren't ever coming back. You don't realise, until you've got a lot of time to dwell, that it's the children who always get the worst of it, when there's war._

Calista's eyes burned and the words began to blur in front of her; but there was more, and she had wanted to know, and so she read doggedly on.

 _Still, they give me hope, too. Harry is just like his father; I only spoke with him for a short time, and already, I am proud of who he has become, as proud as if he were my own son, and I can't imagine the sort of strength that must have been hidden in Bellatrix's girl, for her to go from the wild thing I left in the orphanage to the young woman you wrote about. If you hadn't said that she looks like her mother, I might suspect you'd found the wrong girl._

The letter was signed shortly after that, and there were a few lines in a postscript, but Calista's hands were trembling so forcefully that she thought the parchment was in danger of tearing; that, and the the fact that she wanted, suddenly and fiercely, to have the words as far removed from her as possible led her to thrust the parchment towards her aunt. Andromeda took the page, and then, gently, she attempted to put her arms around her niece, but Calista would have none of it.

"You lied," she said, the first words she could wrench out of her throat, "I do _not_ look like her — "

"You do, sweetheart," her aunt said quietly, and still a bit sadly, "Not precisely, no; but enough."

"Who said you could tell him that?"

Andromeda looked pained; she made a second attempt to reach for Calista, but she flinched away.

"Don't touch me."

Andromeda stopped moving towards her niece; she stayed precisely still, and slipped her hands into her pockets, perhaps trying to appear as non-threatening as possible, perhaps simply at a loss for what to do with her hands; if Calista hadn't been so preoccupied with her own nerves, she might have noticed that her aunt's hands were trembling, too.

"I know that must have been difficult to read —" her aunt started, and Calista cut her off:

"You don't know anything."

She saw the words hit her aunt like a curse; Andromeda winced, and stepped back.

In the other room, Ireland must have scored; there was a massive clamor of shouting and cheering that made both of them start, and the juxtaposition of the situation was just so _absurd_ — Tonks and her friends having loud, raucous fun in the next room, while Calista and Andromeda faced each other, tensely, in a kitchen that was full to bursting with deep, dark words, for all that it was silent — that it left Calista feeling deflated, and disoriented.

Andromeda swallowed audibly. "I'm sorry, Calista. Maybe I shouldn't have told Sirius that; but would you like to know what else I told him?"

She almost refused, out of sheer stubbornness, but her curiosity ultimately got the best of her.

"What." she intoned, flatly; she wouldn't look her aunt in the eye.

"I told him that you were the strongest young woman I know; that you've become such a beautiful, incredible person, that if you _didn't_ look like her, I'd never believe where you came from; I told him that rescuing you was probably one of the most heroic things he did, during the war, because — because no one _else_ did it, even though we all should have; _I_ should have."

Calista exhaled. "It was a long time ago," she said, eventually, because she didn't know what else to say.

"Yes, it was," Andromeda agreed, "But as far as your rescue, anyway, it should have been even longer ago; Sirius and I agree, that if any of us had done what we should have, it would have been too long ago for you to possibly remember; perhaps you would have grown up here, in our house, with Ted and Dora and I — perhaps you would never even need to know whose child you really were, if we'd done things right —"

"How can you _say_ that?" Calista practically choked on her words. "And what good does that do me now?" She bit her lip, hard, a willful distraction from the darkness that had begun to stir, in the deepest, furthest parts of her mind.

"I don't know that it does you any good," Andromeda said softly, "I suppose it doesn't…"

"No, it doesn't; and you forget — he forgets — no, he doesn't even know, Tonks said you didn't tell him — _whose child I really am_? — I'll _tell_ you whose child I am, I'm my _father's_ child, it's in my _name_ who helped me more than anyone else. If you're really so impressed with — with the way I am now, then why didn't you tell your cousin Sirius who raised me to be this way?"

Andromeda looked back at her, silently; her eyes were suddenly unreadable. Calista pressed on. Her conversations with Gerald, about responsibility, and guilt, and all of the people who had failed at every opportunity to save _both_ of them rang in her head, and she suddenly felt as if she were simultaneously a little girl again, and a hundred years old.

"I suppose you mean well, but don't — don't do that again. Don't try and tell me I would've been better off if things were different, because that — that idea — that's for all of _you_ , to try and make _you_ feel better. It doesn't make _me_ feel any better at all."

Her eyes stung now, with a pain and a ferocity that went far beyond what tears could accommodate; dimly, she saw her aunt nod, her eyes flashing with something nearly as dark and heavy as Calista was feeling — and then:

"You're right, of course. I'm sorry, Calista. For everything."

"Fine."

There was a long, uneasy silence between them. Calista felt a powerful urge to leave, to go home, and to talk to the very man she'd just vehemently defended — but suddenly, the idea that he might be out again, that she might go once more to an empty house, might have no companion but pressing silence and the racing of her own heart, was too much to bear; she couldn't go home.

"I think," she said quietly, once she felt even a little bit like herself again, "I'm going to go in and listen to the match now."

Andromeda nodded again, and then she held out a small, parchment-coloured square; for an instant, Calista thought it was the same letter again, and she nearly recoiled, but this one was much smaller, and still sealed up with a spot of dark wax.

"Sirius sent this with his letter. It has your name on it. I haven't opened it, naturally; perhaps you won't want to, but it's intended for you, so it's only right that you have it, instead of me."

Calista took the note, and pocketed it wordlessly. She knew she wouldn't read it tonight; she didn't know when she would, but taking it, at least, was the tiniest of olive branches, and it was all she felt equipped for.

She went into the sitting room; she couldn't have said, hours later, who won or lost the match. She'd made enough small talk not to draw attention to herself, she'd finished her butterbeer, and she'd fingered the little dark seal on the parchment in her pocket until it had gone soft and warm enough to slip open, and then she'd let go of it and tried not to think about it.

Her cousin's friends left, sometime after the match ended; when she went up to Tonks' room with her, and Tonks asked if it was all right to leave the wireless on at a low volume in there, so she could hear the match's final commentary, Calista had said something normal enough, and then she'd lain down in the same sleeping bag that she'd landed in after the firewhiskey, the first time she'd stayed over.

Sleep seemed impossible, but it did eventually come, in fitful, clammy waves. She drifted, somewhere between dreaming and anxious wakefulness; she saw letters in an unfamiliar hand, spelling out words she knew but that made no sense, strung together, in her half-asleep state:

 _I can't tell you how many times I've heard that little girl scream while I was in there —_

She heard it, too, so far away that might have been a different girl, altogether.

 _You don't realise, until you've got a lot of time to dwell, that it's the children who always get the worst of it, when there's war._

She realised; she'd _always_ realised.

' _The Dark Mark, long reviled as the most infamous symbol of You-Know-Who himself was spotted in the air over Dartmoor, as chaos erupted in the early morning hours following the International Quidditch World Cup—'_

Something penetrated the fog of Calista's half-sleep; she sat bolt-upright in bed, trying to dislodge the eerie, buzzing voice that had jolted her awake — she'd been having some sort of awful dream, hadn't she?

Except, even now, that she was sitting up, and she could see the shapes of her cousin's furniture, could see the pale skin of her own hands and arms in the weak, grey light of dawn that filtered through the blinds on the windows, the voice went on.

' — _violent riots preceding the match are said to have resulted in widespread panic. No official reports have been released at this point in time regarding injuries or the total property damage incurred, and no arrests have been made in conjunction with the reported crimes, or the appearance of the Dark Mark.'_

Calista leapt to her feet, fingers reaching automatically for her wand. _Injuries… the Dark Mark…_

 _Draco_ , she thought, immediately. _Aunt Narcissa._

Uncle Lucius was there, too; she felt a sudden disoriented flash of guilt, as she realised that she'd been angry with him, the last time they'd spoken, for not taking her work complaints seriously — that seemed absurdly miniscule, now — and the last thing she'd said about him, to Gerald, hadn't exactly been flattering. What if something had _happened_ , to him or to any of them?

She scrambled to the bedroom door, yanking it open hurriedly, and wincing in pain as it ran over her bare feet, splinters scraping over her toes.

Shoes — they suddenly seemed like such an oddity, _who cares about shoes if something's happened to Draco?_ But she put them on anyway, shoving her feet into them hurriedly, as her cousin stirred blearily.

"Whasss going on? Is it time for work already?"

"The Dark Mark," Calista managed, "Someone — it was on the wireless, someone saw the Dark Mark, and … people were hurt — Draco and Aunt Narcissa were there, I've got to go —"

Tonks leapt up, suddenly alert, wand poised in her hand. "Where are you going? You can't go _there_ — it was at the World Cup?"'

"Yes," she said, and then, voice jerking with emotion: "Of course I'm not going _there,_ I'm going home — I've got to tell Dad, and we… we have to go check on them, we have to find them —"

"Calista, wait —" her cousin reached for her arm, a concerned frown falling over her face, but Calista yanked it away, and hurried down the stairs.

"You're shaking like mad," her cousin said, taking the stairs two at a time behind her, "You can't Apparate like that — you'll Splinch yourself, let me take you."

"I'm _fine_."

She ran out the front door, not even bothering to take cover at the closest Apparition point; she raised her wand in the middle of sidewalk, depending on the the pre-dawn greyness to hide her from anyone who happened to be awake at this strange hour, and she cast the spell that would carry her home.


	5. Dragons and Dogs

**5\. Dragons and Dogs**

Calista landed at the Apparitions spot in Cokeworth with a great deal more nausea than usual, but otherwise unharmed despite Tonks' warning, and took off at a run towards the sloped bank of the dingy, grey river that separated her neighbourhood from the Apparition point.

A dog barked a warning, as she ran past its fenced-in yard, and she thoroughly started a Muggle woman out for a morning jog, but Calista didn't slow or pause, until she reached the front door of the familiar two-up two-down at the end of the street, and hurriedly slipped her key into the lock, tapping her wand to the knob simultaneously. She was so short of breath from her run home that she garbled the charms the first time _and_ the second. She knew that they'd be disabled for an hour, completely locking her out, if she mucked it up again, so she forced herself to draw a breath, and take her time, the third time around.

The door clicked, and swing open into a dark, quiet sitting room. It was so still, in fact, as to be anticlimactic. Calista shut the door behind her, and called out, nervously. What if he wasn't home? What would she do then?

"Dad? Dad!"

For a moment, there was only silence, and she had just started to wonder if she ought to Apparate to Malfoy Manor and see if her aunt and uncle were there. And then, distantly, muffled by the closed bookcase that concealed the entrance to the stairs, she thought she heard a sound upstairs. She tapped her wand to the sliding case, and heard it creak open.

"Someone's downstairs," she heard — a _female_ voice. Calista started, instantly alert. Why in Merlin's name would there be a _woman_ upstairs? There had been a spate of burglaries in the neighborhood recently, all Muggle homes, and she wondered wildly and frantically if one of them had somehow managed to penetrate the charms on the house, even though she _knew_ that wasn't possible.

"Quiet," came another voice — her father's voice. Calista released a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding.

"Dad!" she called, and she darted to the stairs, taking them up two at a time. "Dad, something's happened at the Qui—"

She'd forgotten, for a fraction of an instant, about the mysterious female voice, and then, she reached the top of the stairs, and found its owner.

Her jaw dropped, as she registered the sight of the very startled, and very _familiar_ looking woman, standing beside her father just outside of his bedroom door. Neither one of them were wearing very many clothes beneath the dressing gowns they were both hurrying into.

" _Mrs. Yaxley?_ What the — why are you here?"

"Never mind," her father snapped, pulling his robes closed — he was at least wearing _something_ underneath, thank Merlin, she didn't know if she'd have been able to handle her mortification if he hadn't been — and he had his wand held ready, eyes peering suspiciously over her shoulder, as if someone sinister were poised to follow her up.

Ferada Yaxley's face darkened, and she ducked back into the bedroom, shutting the door quickly behind her.

"I'm sorry," she heard, through the door, "Severus, I thought you said she was staying somewhere else — oh, _shit_ , this is —"

"What's happened?" her father interrupted grimly, neatly cutting off the rest of whatever Mrs. Yaxley had been about to say. "You said something's happened. Are you hurt?"

"I — no — what is she —" Calista exhaled, trying to reign in the suddenly disorganised scramble of her thoughts. She had been very worried about something, before she'd been faced with the sight of Mrs. Yaxley's knickers, and a conclusion that her mind was sluggishly resisting.

"Speak, Calista," her father prompted, impatiently; his wand hand lowered slightly, but his face stayed grim and alert. "What did you come home — early and unannounced — to tell me?"

"Unannounced — I _live_ here, since when do I have to announce —" she stopped, and shook her head, the sharp sting of panic returning as she recalled precisely what _had_ sent her running here, before the sun had even properly risen.

"The — the Dark Mark," she managed, breathlessly, "Someone set off the Dark Mark at the World Cup — there were riots — I heard it on the wireless."

Calista expected her father to curse, or to brush past her down the stairs, intent on calling the Malfoys on the fire to ensure they had made it home; instead, something happened that dropped a hard, heavy stone of panic square into her gut.

Her father's face drained of colour, and his fingers whitened and shook, gripping his wand so tightly that it wouldn't have surprised her if it snapped right in half.

"You are — you are certain that this is what you heard?" he asked her, harshly. Calista nodded, and _then_ , he gave her the reaction she'd expected, if a bit late.

" _Fuck_ ," he said, biting the word off as hurriedly as he might rip the cork from a flask of antidote, and he practically shoved her aside, swooping down the stairs, securing his dressing-gown as he went.

She followed him down, hovering at his shoulder just as his head disappeared into the fireplace.

"Lucius," she heard, straining to hear her father's voice over the merry crackling of the flames that he must have summoned there, the instant before throwing the Floo powder on, "What happened at the Quidditch Cup?"

Calista frowned, wishing it were possible to hear the other end of the conversation. It would have been, if Lucius had been the one to call _their_ home, or if they had a newer, more expensive fireplace model, like her aunt and uncle did.

"Ask him if Draco's all right," she said, at her father's elbow, but he either didn't hear her or he was ignoring her.

"Not the bloody _score_ ," her father hissed, "You know what I mean, Lucius."

"Dad, can you see Draco? Or Aunt Narcissa?"

" _The Mark_ ," her father spat, and the flames briefly roared up around him, as if fueled by his evident irritation, "Who summoned the Mark?"

She leaned forward, straining her ears, even though she knew it was futile — and then she was startled by the creak of a floorboard behind her, and the sound of a woman clearing her throat.

She whirled around, and found herself face-to-face with a frowning, anxious, and — thank _Merlin_ — fully clothed Mrs. Yaxley.

"Erm — hello, Calista," she said, kindly and a bit awkwardly, "I'm certain…" she cleared her throat again, and went on, a bit more confidently: "I'm certain you're wondering why I'm here."

Calista stared back at her silently for a moment. _You're studying_ , she had a sudden wild, unexplained urge to say, _Adults do study. I understand that._ It took her a moment to place where the words had come from; she nearly choked when she recalled that her _father_ had said them, in reference to her and Gerald.

She felt a heavy, wriggling mass drop into her stomach, as her mind caught up to the subtext of that memory, and the inevitable conclusion it had thus far been resisting quite valiantly.

"I'm not stupid," she said, sounding possibly every bit as grim as her father; she couldn't bring herself to elaborate.

"It's just, Calista, your father and I — we've both been a bit lonely, and —"

"Ferada." Her father's voice, sudden and snapping, startled them both. "That's enough." He shifted his gaze to his daughter, who had turned back to face him. The call had already been disconnected, the fire extinguished, and the room was quiet, except for her father's voice and the crackling of the tension between the three of them.

"Draco, and your aunt and uncle, are perfectly all right," he told her, tone still inexplicably grim despite the welcome news, "Lucius assures me that no one in attendance at the match suffered any lasting injury."

"Who set off the Mark?" Calista asked; her father's jaw twitched.

"I don't know."

"The Mark?" Mrs. Yaxley's voice had suddenly changed, had turned sharp and wary. "The — not the Dark Mark?"

Severus jerked his head in a tight nod of confirmation. "Lucius confirmed it; he says he does not know who cast it."

"No one's seen the Dark Mark in nearly thirteen years," Mrs. Yaxley said, as if any of them needed the reminder.

Calista was seeing it _now_ ; it had sprung, unbidden, to the back of her mind — the acid-green glow against the blackest of night skies, and _always_ , she could hear her mother's laughter, echoing up, like a curl of black smoke —

' _See how perfect it is?' her mother's sharp fingers snake forward, forming a pincer-like grip at Calista's chin. She shivers, but she sets her eyes obediently on the luminous shape. It's certainly not the worst thing her mother has ever made her see. She feels the familiar creep of blankness in her mind, feels light and feels like nothing as she begins, again, to float away, somewhere she can convince herself that none of this is real. The man at her mother's feet isn't dead; he's sleeping, and actually_ she's _sleeping too, and she'll wake up and —_

And it wouldn't matter; it had never mattered, until a strange man with her mother's eyes in an alien face had taken her, and set off the events that would lead her somewhere _new_. Until then, it hardly seemed to matter whether she was sleeping or awake; after all, even if she convinced herself that the horrors had been a dream this time, when she woke it would still be in the same world they all lived in; she wasn't evading, she was only delaying —

"Calista," a familiar voice came quietly, forcefully breaking through to her; suddenly, it was as if the blackness was dissolving into safe, familiar stone walls.

 _There is somewhere else_ , she reminded herself, _When you wake up, it_ is _different; it_ is _safe._

At least, it had been, up until the moment that Mrs. Yaxley's words had made it all real; the Dark Mark had never been part of this world, the safe world; the Dark Mark, the true Dark Mark, grotesque and vivid in the sky, had always been solidly part of _before_.

She felt her father's eyes on her, and saw him reaching out towards her; Mrs. Yaxley made a small, kind sound of concern, and suddenly all Calista could think of was the time, during the summer after her first year, when she'd stayed over at Emily's house and Mrs. Yaxley had had to _remind_ her to wash her hair, and then she'd woken the whole house up later the same night with one of her nightmares and _Merlin's blood,_ the reason she'd been waking to an empty house after her nightmares now was because of _her?_

"Calista, dear, are you all right…?" Mrs. Yaxley ventured, and it was like a spark had gone off in Calista's insides.

She was filled with a fierce, flashing rush of anger for the second time in as many days; her skin felt hot and her nerves felt alive, and she leapt back out of her father's reach, screwing her face up into the most wrathful, convincing snarl she could muster.

"I'm _fine_ ," she growled, "And if I wasn't, it's not your concern — whatever _this_ is —" she gestured between them, between Mrs. Yaxley and her father, "Don't worry, you don't have to pretend to care about _me_ — I mean, even Dad doesn't bother with that anymore —"

 _Fuck;_ what the hell had she just said? She clenched her jaw and turned away, before it could catch up with her; she collected her trembling limbs and directed them grimly on a path that sent them upstairs, to her room, and she let the trapdoor fall closed behind her with a tremendous, jarring _thud_ that would have been satisfying, had it not startled her into scurrying backwards from it.

Gods, what was _wrong_ with her? It was like she'd become nine years old again, like she had to convince herself that she wasn't going to be sent back every time she misbehaved; she thought recklessly that if she _was_ back at Hogwarts, she might very well throw herself in with the Giant Squid and see what came of it —

But that was the very crux of the problem, wasn't it? The Dark Mark had been set off, as if to prove that the increasingly dark dreams she'd been plagued with were every bit as ominous as they seemed, and in less than a week, her father was going back to Hogwarts and she _wasn't_ , and wasn't _he_ the one that was supposed to be worried, about that? Why wasn't he fretting and snarling and trying to convince her to apply for a post at the school, or to owl him every day to confirm that she was all right?

She expected to hear a knock at the trapdoor any minute; she practically held her breath, until it grew too late and she had to get ready for work. And then, when her father _did_ try to catch her, on her way out, she brushed him off, reminding him of where she had to be. She noted, with a grim sort of satisfaction, that Mrs. Yaxley had gone.

"What time will you be home?" her father asked quietly, catching the door behind her, stopping her from slamming that one, too.

"I don't know," she said, intentionally evasive, though she didn't quite know why. "I might go over to Gerald's or Amelia's after work."

In truth, she had no intention of doing either, but she wanted to see how he'd react. She found herself hoping that he would forbid it, that there would be an excuse for them to argue.

Instead, her father only nodded, features utterly impassive, even to her.

"I'll be here," he told her, words small and somehow hard, "I'll wait."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

When Calista arrived at work, she stopped short as soon as she'd entered the brightly-lit workroom; Madam Hipworth, the Department Head, was there, at the centre of the room, talking to Astra by the workstations; their heads were bent low, and Astra looked like she was very upset about something.

 _Probably mucked up another Beautifying Brew_ , she thought scornfully, _and she's trying to justify to Madam Hipworth why she took someone off brewing an actual antidote to make a new one_.

Although, the very problem with the department, in Calista's eyes, was that there _was_ absolutely no oversight on Astra, at least not that wasn't provided, reluctantly and grimly, by her own underlings. It seemed unlikely that Madam Hipworth would suddenly find Astra's actions objectionable, when she had thus far left everything up to her second-in-command.

However… if Madam Hipworth was here, maybe she could take a moment to speak with Calista _now_ about the contract with the Committee for Experimental Charms; maybe she wouldn't need to wait until 8th September after all —

She tried to casually put herself in Madam Hipworth's line of sight so she could catch her eye and ask her for a word, but she needn't have bothered; scarcely a breath later, she heard her name:

"Miss Snape. There you are."

She felt a flash of uncertainty; why were they looking at her like that? Why was _everyone_ looking at her like that? She realised that her coworkers were all eying her more or less warily; even _Madam Hipworth_ , typically the picture of composure, looked nervous. Only Astra's expression differed, and it was laced with pure, unadulterated and undisguised hatred.

Madam Hipworth lowered the stack of papers she'd been holding; she drew the top one off, and held it out to Calista.

"You'll be pleased, I expect," Madam Hipworth said, evenly, while Astra continued to stare daggers at her. "I trust you'll let your — _uncle_ — know that his requests have been honoured to the letter; and of course, that the department deeply appreciates his generous gift."

Calista blinked. "Erm — what?" She reached hesitantly for the paper; it was the signed sheet, authorising her to work off-site for the Committee every Friday. She hardly dared to believe it; she hadn't even _asked_ Madam Hipworth yet...

"Don't play stu—" Astra began, but Madam Hipworth silenced her, almost immediately with a stern look, and a much louder voice:

"St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries is always very appreciative of monetary donations," Madam Hipworth said, in a carefully controlled voice, "Indeed, how very — _flattering_ — it is for our department to be singled out for such a generous one, when there are others with a more dire need; and so, of course, Mr. Malfoy's requests are quite reasonable, in the face of his particular generosity, and as I've said, we've met them to the letter."

She looked down to the next sheet in her stack of pages, as Calista felt her heart sink. She was beginning to get a very bad feeling about this, despite the page clutched in her fingers of what should have been very welcome news.

"New cauldrons have already been ordered, from the specified manufacturer, devoid of any self-stirring mechanisms — though I hope we shall be permitted to keep at least a few of our existing cauldrons around, as it would be such a —" her nostrils flared briefly —"tragic _waste_ otherwise, of a prior, equally generous gift…"

"Self-stirring cauldrons save hundreds of witch-hours a week," Astra interjected, hotly, "It's foolish to —"

"Madam Shingleton." Madam Hipworth silenced her with a stern look, and continued down the list, naming condition after condition that had evidently been attached to the gift — they were to shift their supply chain of potions ingredients to one that Calista knew for a certainty that her Uncle Lucius owned a significant share of, and their new cauldrons were coming from a manufacturer that he _also_ had a stake in; ingredients were to be inventoried at the end of every week to address a rumoured waste problem in the department; it was to be logged whenever a potion was discarded and a new one had to be made in its place…

"And of course," Madam Hipworth finished, nodding formally to Calista, "You are to be released to work at the Ministry every Friday at a minimum, and on other days if your, ah, _expertise_ is requested; as your position has now been independently funded, it appears that neither Astra nor I will have any control over dictating where, or how, you spend your time at work."

Calista's jaw dropped. "I didn't — Madam Hipworth, I hope you don't think that I asked Uncle Lucius for this —"

Madame Hipworth's face stretched into a cold, forced smile.

"As I've said, Miss Snape," she said, voice strained, "We thank your uncle for his _very_ generous gift; and now, I think, it is time that you got to work. That is, if it pleases you, of course."

Utterly dumbfounded, Calista didn't know what to _do_ other than precisely what Madam Hipworth had suggested; she retrieved a cauldron from the shelf — _this_ time, no one said anything when she chose a battered one that was not self-stirring, and began to set her workstation up for the day, feeling disbelieving and somehow just as battered as her cauldron, as if a year had passed in the span of a single morning; and when she thought about it, and realised that the day had started with the buzzing, haunting broadcast that had sent her hurrying heedlessly home, it was nearly impossible to accept that it was still that same, awful day.

Feeling heavy and empty at once, she set to work, doing her best to ignore the hiss of whispers and the assortment of cold stares; after all, it wasn't _new_ , not really. Wasn't it horrifyingly ironic that she'd thought just this morning — or fifty years ago, whenever it was — that she felt like a child, again? Well, here was another bastion of her childhood, rearing its head — ostracism, and all because she had done something to vex the pretty, spoiled, blue-eyed girl that she was forced to spend most of the day with.

Of course, _she_ hadn't actually done anything — but when, in her entire life, had that _ever_ mattered?

Hours or decades later, Calista was startled by a shadow, and a presence at her shoulder — she looked up, feeling a vague, hopeful sort of relief as she realised it was Kyle Macmillan, who had become her staunchest work ally, of late, ever since the day he'd sympathised with her about Astra and given her the Cauldron Cake. Perhaps she could make him understand that she hadn't asked for any of this.

"Kyle," she said quietly, "I know you're all cross with me, but I didn't —"

"Pardon me," he said, quite stiffly, voice and face hard, "I don't mean to intrude — but if you'd so _kindly_ hand me that jar of terag leaves, I'd be most obliged — unless, of course, you don't want to, apparently that's your right now —"

Calista scowled, and shoved the jar across the workspace towards him.

"I didn't _ask_ for this," she snarled, but Kyle just snatched the jar up, and scowled every bit as harshly.

"Just another pretty rich girl, after all, who gets whatever she wants by throwing around sacks of Galleons and fluttering her eyelashes," he snarked, quietly, by her shoulder. "I don't know why I was daft enough to think anything different."

"Get stuffed," Calista said, angrily and forcefully; Kyle just stretched his smirk wider, and gave her an exaggerated bow.

"As you wish, _Princess_ Callie."

This last statement was quite loud, for everyone to hear; she felt her face heat up as as it was followed by a chorus of sniggering. So here it was, again; at least, she told herself silently, she was used to it, by now. She lifted her chin and set her shoulders, and concentrated on her potion, ignoring the hostility that hung, thick in the air.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista had never been so eager to leave work in her life; she was sorely tempted to exit through the back way, even if it did mean she'd have to climb out of a dingy petrol station toilet, but she realised grimly that she'd have to face the portrait eventually; she was already having a colossally bad day, so she supposed she might as well get it over with sooner rather than later.

It had evidently started the argument without her; she could hear its muffled voice as she approached, and even from behind its canvas, she detected the particular lilt of sarcasm.

"— very long and very specific list of requirements," the portrait was saying sardonically, "And letting skinny little _fops_ into a restricted area wasn't one of them —"

Calista pushed the portrait open from behind, and stepped out, squaring her shoulders in anticipation of whatever insults the portrait would throw at her.

It was quite swift to provide them; she heard "envious, opportunistic snake" and "beaky little vulture" before she realised who was standing just on the other side of the portrait, and stopped listening.

"Gerald? What are you doing here?"

His face was pinched with concern, though it did flicker briefly to relief when he laid eyes on her — and then, very quickly, _back_ to pinched concern, after he had looked her over.

"I came to make sure everything was all right, of course," he said earnestly, and he reached for her hand, and began to walk her swiftly away from the ranting portrait, casting it a very dark look over his shoulder as they went, "I saw the paper, and I remembered you said that your family were going to the Quidditch Cup…"

"They're fine," Calista said, tightly, "And I'm —"

Suddenly, she couldn't do it; she couldn't bring herself to say that she was fine. She felt the familiar ache of _not_ being fine, choking her and burning, from her gut into her throat and all the way up to the back of her eyes. She inhaled and bit the inside of her lip, determined that nothing would show on her face, or in the inflection of her voice. She was tired of always having a _problem_ , and she just wanted —

"You're coming over to my house, for dinner, is what you're doing," Gerald said, quietly and firmly, and he tightened his grip on her hand.

" — fine." The word came out _then_ ; she realised a second too late that it sounded like she'd agreed to his proposition, but when she opened her mouth to clarify, it suddenly seemed too exhausting to bother. Everything seemed exhausting, so much so that when they ducked into an alley and Gerald moved to Apparate both of them, she allowed him to do so without protest, without insisting she could do it herself.

She stayed silent, too, during the short walk from the Apparition point to his building, and up the stairs to his third-floor flat, even when he explained that he'd actually tried to catch her that morning at her home, and during his lunch break at the hospital, and even when he prodded, gently, to find out whether she had remembered to eat.

She realised she hadn't; not on purpose, it was just that Mrs. Yaxley had been there in the morning — she made an involuntary face at that recollection — and then she'd been certain that she would have been ridiculed more than it would have been worth if she'd stopped her work during the day after Madam Hipworth's bombshell.

She did manage an imitation of a smile in response to the warm greeting from Gerald's mother, once they'd gone inside.

"Hello Calista," Tina said, pressing onto her into the sort of light, careful hug that always made Calista suspicious of how much Gerald had told her, "Nice to see you again — you'll stay for dinner, I hope?"

Calista made a noncommittal sort of sound, but Tina's gaze had already shifted to her son, lighting up. "Gerry, you _just_ missed a call from Gérald, he's probably still home if you want to call him back — he was disappointed to miss both you and Terry, of course, but he's very excited to meet —"

 _A call? But Gerald's fireplace isn't connected…_ It took Calista a few seconds to realise who his mother was talking about and to remember that Muggles had a way to call each other too, some sort of annoying audio-only device that made a horrible sound that had once scared her nearly out of her wits at Amelia's parents' house.

"Mum!" Gerald interrupted quickly; he jerked his head back and forth, _no_. "It's supposed to be — I haven't — I mean, erm," he frowned, visibly flustered; he glanced towards Calista, cheeks going pink, and then, hastily: "Where's Terry? Why'd he miss him, too?"

"He's at his friend Michael's house," Tina said; she slipped a glance between them, from her son to Calista and then back. "I'm sorry, Gerry, I didn't realise you hadn't…"

" _Mum._ "

Tina blinked, and smiled faintly. "I didn't realise you hadn't talked to Terry today," she said, brightly, in possibly the most transparent attempt at deception that Calista had ever seen.

"Gérald?" Calista asked, as soon as Tina had left the room, "Isn't that your uncle in France, the one that you're named for?"

Gerald frowned, and nodded, hesitantly; she saw that he looked distinctly uneasy, but not as if something were _wrong_ , exactly; more as if he were trying to hide something fairly benign, like he had the news of his job in the Runes Office, or her surprise birthday party, or —

"International papers. Oh."

Somewhere in the back of her mind, several puzzle pieces had snapped suddenly into place, and she simultaneously remembered that Gerald had been planning on taking her somewhere, and realised that _somewhere_ was undoubtedly in France. It all seemed distant now, as if… well, as if the plans had been made a hundred years ago, or more.

"I — erm — this wasn't exactly how I imagined you'd find out," Gerald ventured, after a moment. "But I did hope you'd be a _bit_ more excited than — uhm, than this."

"Well, I don't think I can go," she said, feeling her skin crawl as she imagined having to ask Astra for _anything_ now; that Astra evidently couldn't say no now, if Madam Hipworth was to be believed, didn't make her feel any less anxious about the prospect; surely, if she couldn't _deny_ Calista the time, she'd find some other way, now, to make her pay for it, wouldn't she?

"Why not?" Gerald asked, trying and failing to cover his disappointment, "Is it - did they say you couldn't take time off? Or is your father worried about letting you go? I can talk to him, if you think it would help, my family there are Muggles, but I'm sure we could figure out a way for you to be able to check in with him, if that's the problem."

Calista felt the ache of _not fine_ return in full force; she nearly choked on a bitter _not-laugh_ at the idea of her father being worried about letting her go.

"I don't suppose he'd even know if I went or not," she said; she'd meant it to come out hard and bitter, a joke at her own expense, or at her father's — she wasn't even certain which — but somehow, it had manifested as little more than a whisper, around the lump in her throat.

Gerald's frown deepened; she could feel his eyes on her, warm with concern, but she was filled with a heavy, spiky, slimy urge to turn away, to pull away, to — to _disappear_ ; but of course, even with magic, such a thing was exceedingly difficult to do, and she was still tired and still heavy inside and still _not fine_ , and so instead she let him take up her hands and pull her close, just as she had fifteen minutes ago, when he'd wanted to Apparate her.

"Calista, _mon colibri, qu'est-ce qui ne va pas?_ " _What's wrong?_

 _Everything._ "I'm f—" Again, she couldn't say it; she tried again. "I'm f—" she took a breath, and then, probably as honest as she'd been with anyone in weeks: "I'm fucking tired of being _me_."

She could see his concern intensify, and she was suddenly tired of _that_ , too — she yanked her hands away from his, and started to pull away, to _run away_ ; and then she realised that she'd been doing precisely that, all day, all _summer_ , really; she'd been running away from Tonks and from Andromeda, who really _had_ been trying to be kind, from Sirius whose note she still had in her pocket and had not read, from her father and from Mrs. Yaxley and from everyone at work, and — and her father, at least, had been letting her go, and it only made her feel _worse_ each time, and _why_ did she keep doing this to herself?

Why did she keep dashing off towards the forest, or the lake, where she'd only get hopelessly lost or end up drowning, when the thing she really wanted was… well, it was…

"Gerald?" she said quietly, a few paces from his front door, "Can I — can we —" she took a wobbly breath, "Can you just — lie down with me, like before?"

Mercifully, he seemed to understand at once; he took her hand up again, and led her gently into his room, closing the door quietly behind them. In a moment, they were by his bed, and this time it was she who pulled him down, pulled him closer, and as soon as they were both on top of it, she pressed herself against him, almost unbearably relieved by the smell of his skin, by the pulse of his throat, against her cheek.

She'd had no idea, until _he'd_ asked for this last time, how incredibly comforting it could be, just to be close to someone, even when it seemed like the opposite of what her instincts wanted. How often, though, had she caved to the need for distance, only to end up as she had in her nightmares: alone, at the edge of a terrible, cold lake of memories and fear?

This was infinitely preferable to that: this was warm arms and soft breaths, fingers in her hair and kisses planted softly at the crown of her head; and it was so unlike the things she'd come to expect for herself that, for a moment, it almost felt as if she'd succeeded, in the plea she'd made to _stop being her_.

Of course, it didn't take long for the last hundred-year day to start trickling back in, and soon she was crying, shoulders shaking and face wet, even though she did manage not to make any noise. Gerald tightened his hold, pulling her even closer, and when he murmured "Tell me, _mon cœur_ ," she suddenly found that she could, and she wanted to.

She told him nearly everything. She told him about the nightmares that had been creeping back in, the empty house she was realising she was always going to be waking to, soon; to the contents of the letter from Sirius, the way she and her aunt had argued about it, how hurt she'd been that Andromeda had neglected to tell Sirius who her father was, had seemed to gloss over it herself; she told him how she'd heard about the Dark Mark, how she'd been worried for her family at first, and then — she recounted this part almost mechanically, body stiffening with dread — what she was afraid it might _mean_ that the Mark had appeared, now, after so many years without it; she admitted what it had always meant to her, and that its return felt somehow as if she were going back in time, to a part of her life where she hadn't even understood the word _safe_.

He had made a strange sound, when she'd been talking about the Mark — and he'd taken a breath, started to say something — but when she pulled slightly back and tilted her face up, so she could hear him better, he'd shaken his head, and pulled her in close again, and asked her to go on.

The rest of it seemed mundane, in comparison, but that didn't mean it was hurting her any less acutely; she told him how things had been with her father, how she had found her old roommate and sometimes-friend's mother at her house, and how somehow that had made her angry, even though she knew her reasons were petty and unfair; she admitted, grudgingly, that she didn't want her father to go back to Hogwarts without her, even though she knew that of course he had to, and then — finally, feeling her face heat with shame, she told him what had happened at work, about her Uncle Lucius' apparent 'gift' and the restrictions he'd placed on it that seemed to ensure that her co-workers would never cease to hate her.

"And that's why — that's why I can't go, to France or anywhere," she'd finished, finding that her tears had been spent at last, and that now she was simply unimaginably, indescribably tired, "She'll just — _they'll_ just think it's because my family bribed someone, or something, and I'm just so _sick_ of people hating me for things I don't have any control over."

" _Mon colibri courageux_ ," Gerald said, inexplicably, because she felt anything but, at the moment, "I don't know how you can keep all these things inside like you do."

"Well, I can't, obviously," she responded, with a trace of self-deprecating bitterness; Gerald kissed her hair again, and then:

"I can't think of how we can solve everything just yet," he said quietly, "But I think I can work a few things out, to start."

"There's nothing you can do," Calista said quickly, "I wasn't asking —"

"Come to the Ministry, on Fridays," he said, "You've finally got clearance to work with the Committee; you'll be able to do the research you want, and I know you'll do amazing things. We can meet for lunch, like we said a long time ago. So what if that horrid woman Astra doesn't like it; she's not the one being published in the _Journal of Experimental Charms_ next week, is she?"

"Well… I suppose not."

"And you _don't_ have to be alone at home, if you don't want to; I'll stay, whenever you like. I can sleep on the sofa if you don't feel comfortable having me in your room, or if you'd rather come _here_ I can probably talk Mum into that, sometimes, too, at least until after the trial when I'm going to be looking for my own place, anyway."

Calista lifted her head, slightly; it sounded too good to be true, and of course it probably was. She recalled several nights where she'd woken and wished she could call him on the fire, but to have him actually _there_ seemed a hundred times better; but of course, her father would _never_ agree… she felt a prick of irritation, because apparently it was just fine for _him_ to have overnight guests —

Gerald went on, before she had a chance to build her anger up _too_ intensely:

"And you know, as for the trip — it strikes me that, as long as you still want to go, and as long as we can reassure your father that you'll be safe and get his blessing, why _shouldn't_ we go? Your co-workers were never really very good to you before; it sounds like Astra's just miffed because she thinks you've beaten her at her own game. Whether you asked for it or not, it seems you've got some power there, now; if you're stuck with it either way, why not use it to your advantage? Take the time off."

"I don't know," she said, even though, quite frankly, when he presented it that way, it _did_ sound perfectly logical…

"Calista, _mon beau colibri de marbre_ , after what you've told me, if there's anyone in the world that deserves a few days away from reality to be adored and romanced, it's certainly you. Besides, my well-intentioned but loud-mouthed mother is right: _Oncle Gérald_ and Sandrine _are_ very eager to meet you, after everything I've told them."

Calista felt a rush of heat to her cheeks, despite herself. "Sandrine?" she asked, to buy herself a few seconds to imagine his definition of being _adored and romanced_ , "Is that your aunt?"

Gerald shook his head; she could feel it and hear it. "My cousin," he said, "She's not much older than me, and we used to write a lot when we were younger." He paused, and ran his fingers idly through her hair, curling the end of a section between his fingers.

"I suppose I've probably never mentioned it before," he said, lightly, "But my uncle Gérald is gay, which is undoubtedly why my father finds it so utterly amusing to insinuate that I must be, too. He was married to a woman, though, a long time ago; that's how he ended up with Sandrine. And that's why she and I were close, actually, when we were small; it was for different reasons, but we were both teased a lot in primary school."

Calista felt her brow wrinkle. "Why would she be teased for that?"

"Oh, right," Gerald shifted slightly, so he could look down in her direction. "That's another difference, between wizarding society and Muggle society, and for once, the wizarding way comes off better; Muggles are probably about thirty years behind us, when it comes to recognising gay rights; my uncle's still not allowed to marry, and I think it discourages him from really trying to settle down with anyone."

Calista frowned; that didn't make much sense to her, and she opened her mouth to say so, but then there was a soft tapping at the door, and Tina was asking them, through the door, if they were hungry. As if on cue, Calista's stomach rumbled. Gerald answered his mother, and then sat up, lifting her with him, and quirked his mouth at her, a bit sardonically.

"Ah, and now I _finally_ get a straight answer to that question, as well," he mused, "You didn't remember to eat today, did you?"

"I didn't exactly have the sort of day where the thought even had time to cross my mind," she replied, defensively, and Gerald smiled a bit sadly, and lifted her hand to his mouth.

"And that," he said, kissing her fingers, "Is another reason that I should stay with you; ah, and another reason that you really are overdue for being adored and —"

"Gerry?" his mother's voice came through the door again, "Calista? Dinner's getting cold."

"Shouldn't you finish your sentence?" Calista teased, as they left his room; somehow, he had managed, yet again, to make her feel infinitely better than she had been feeling. Gerald paused in the doorway, still holding onto her hand, and she thought he was going to do just that, but _instead_ …

He shifted closer to her, surreptitiously glancing to his right to ensure that his mother was out of sight; and then, he wrapped his free arm around her waist, and pulled her gently in, quite as close as they'd been a few moments before, on his bed, and he pressed his mouth onto hers, quite softly at first, but quickly shifting into something that was _more_ , and that gave her a very accurate and vivid understanding of precisely what he had meant, by the word _romanced_.

"All right, then," she murmured, a bit breathlessly, when he broke the kiss off _far_ too quickly for her liking, before his mother could come looking for them again, "Where exactly are we going, in France?"

Gerald grinned; she noted with satisfaction that he had gone as pink as she knew she must have.

"Marseille," he said, "But please, _mon cœur,_ don't ask me to reveal any more than that; I do want to keep some element of surprise, after all."

"All right," Calista said, but then — she couldn't resist touching his elbow, and when he paused, leaning close to murmur: "At least until we get there; I think I will ask you to reveal a few things, _then_."

She saw his ears and his cheeks turning red, and she thought she had won, until they entered the kitchen.

He pulled her chair out for her, leaning over her shoulder as she sat down; and then, in an instant where his mother's back was turned, he whispered, right into the shell of her ear:

" _J'espère que tu rendras la pareille, quand nous sserons ensemble à Marseille_."

Calista suppressed a furious blush with possibly the greatest effort she had expelled in recent memory.

"I might not," she murmured darkly, during a moment when his mother had turned away again, "If you keep inflicting _poetry_ on me."

"I don't think you really mean that," Gerald said, evenly.

Calista scowled. Sometimes, she _hated_ when he was right.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

It was well after nine when Calista tapped her wand to the front door of the little house at Spinner's End; the sun hovered lazily over the horizon, casting long, wobbly shadows from all the chimneys.

There was a swift rustling, as soon as she pushed open the door, as Severus rose from where he had been sitting, in the room's single armchair. The overhead chandelier was lit; it struck Calista that it was the first time in quite a long time that it had been, when she'd come home.

"A call would have been nice," he said, not quite maliciously.

Calista narrowed her eyes; whatever Gerald had done to improve her mood, it was rapidly evaporating.

"Maybe I would have called, if I thought you'd be home."

"I did tell you this morning that I would be waiting," her father pointed out.

"Fine," she said, much more evenly than she was suddenly feeling. "And I did tell _you_ that I was probably going over to Gerald's after work."

"Yes," he hissed back, eyes narrowing to match the set of hers, "Which is why I said ' _a call would have been nice',_ instead of ' _Where the hell have you been?_ '"

"Since when do you even care?" she challenged; she could feel the first flickerings of her familiar old friend rage, coming to life against her skin; it didn't help that being here, arguing with him like this, had reminded her _again_ that in a few days, he would be gone for months; and even though she'd felt a flicker of hope at Gerald's suggestion, she realised there was absolutely _no way_ her father would permit it.

"Pardon me?" her father snarled back, "Since when do I _care_? What have I spent the majority of my waking moments doing over the last thirteen years, besides _caring_ where you are, and whether you are safe?"

"Emily Yaxley's mother, apparently," Calista shot back, before she had time to really consider the wisdom of it; Severus first flinched, and then blanched, and then advanced, face darkening.

"I see; so you think that what you discovered this morning gives you free reign to ignore my rules, and to disrespect me?"

"Oh, rules?" Calista said, brow and voice rising simultaneously, "Do we still have those, then? I thought perhaps they disappeared whenever you did — which is to say, all the time —"

Severus' forehead was wrinkling, his lip curling in anger — and then, suddenly, it wasn't. His face slipped into an entirely unexpected expression, given the situation: he was suddenly, utterly perplexed.

He lifted his hand, halting the rest of whatever she'd been about to say.

"Wait a minute," he said, and his mouth twisted into a concerned sort of frown, "Are you trying to tell me that you _dislike_ that I've been gone more? That I've been giving you more freedom, and being less intrusive?"

Calista huffed. She clenched her jaw; when he phrased it like that, it seemed — well, it didn't encompass the way that she'd seen this summer, the empty rooms and the empty hours.

" _No_ ," she said, "I'm saying that I _dislike_ coming home and the house is always dark, and — and that I could've been doing anything all night any of these nights, you'd never have any idea — and having a nightmare and waking up and there's _no one_ here —"

She felt herself scowling; the hard lump was back, suddenly in her throat.

"I see," Severus said, again, much softly and much kinder than he'd said it a minute ago. He swallowed, and then he reached, tentatively, for her shoulder; she debated, but perhaps she'd learned something, after all, from choosing not to run away from Gerald, earlier that evening. She stayed, and met his gaze.

"I thought I was giving you what you wanted," he said, quietly, "You've reminded me, so often, lately, that you _are_ an adult — a sentiment which I still find hard to swallow, but which I have no choice but to attempt to accept, in light of many of your recent actions — but you should know, there has never been one minute all summer where I didn't know damn well where you were, and that you were safe."

She frowned, feeling her anger begin to dissipate, as quickly as it had sparked to life; hadn't she told him, how she felt about being left alone? But no, she realised, she really _hadn't_ , she'd snapped and stormed, but she'd stopped short, every goddamn time, that they'd been about to have a real conversation about it.

"As I see it," her father continued, tone suddenly grim, when she didn't respond, "That's the problem — the one I've been trying so desperately not to acknowledge; next week, when I return to Hogwarts, you won't be coming with me; it will no longer be easy for me to know those two very critical things: where you are, and whether you are safe."

Calista swallowed, hard, hardly daring to believe what she was hearing, but also wondering how she could have thought, given everything that they'd been through together, that he could possibly feel any other way than precisely the way _she_ did.

"It… it takes at least a day to reach the castle by owl," Calista ventured, quietly, a thought which had been haunting her most of the summer, but which she had not previously voiced aloud, "Each way."

Severus nodded, still grim. And then: "I've thought of two things," he said, softly, "That might give me some measure of assurance, on both counts; and if I'd thought you'd have seen them as anything but an intrusive nuisance, I would have brought them up much sooner; but as it is, I think you know that we must suspect that the world is not quite the same today, for us, as it was yesterday."

Calista's breath froze in her throat; for a minute, her senses were arrested by the imagine, in the back of her mind, of a sinister, terrible shape, sickening emerald against the black of night.

"With any luck," her father continued, and it struck her that he was speaking to her in the same tone that he used to speak to his contemporaries, to other professors or to her Uncle Lucius, and then, as if she'd summoned his name to her father's thoughts by thinking it herself, he finished: "Lucius is correct, and what happened at that blasted Quidditch match was only the work of a small group of discontents; but I have told you, once before, I think, that I have never been a very lucky man…"

"You know there aren't many who can summon it," she said, quietly; she saw the truth of it reflected back in her father's grim expression, "And anyone who _can_ — they're _asking_ to be thrown in Azkaban, should they be found out."

"It's a lot to risk," her father acknowledged; she felt the familiar clutch of horror in her gut; it was one thing to worry, herself. It was another to know that her father shared her concern. "And it begs the question of why _now_?"

Yes; _why now_? It circled back around to one of the things she'd tried to explain to Gerald, earlier; why did this have to happen just when she was going to be away from her father, just when she was going to be _alone_ , for the first time since she had learned what it was _not_ to be alone? _Not fine_ was threatening her stomach, her throat, her heart, the soft skin at her temples, for the nth time that day.

"I very much hope that the appearance of the Mark was an isolated incident," Severus said, "But I do not relish relying on hope any more than I like to rely on luck; and that's why I've asked the Headmaster and the Ministry for approval to connect the fireplace in my office at Hogwarts to the fireplace, here; so that I can call you, and you can call me, at a moment's notice, and so that I can travel more freely home, if you need me to."

Calista felt her jaw drop. "Do you… do you really think they'll allow that?"

"I don't intend to take no for an answer," he replied, tightly, and _then:_

"There's one other measure I'd like for us to take. I understand that you might object, and I will not press the issue if you do, but…"

Her father took a breath. "I don't want you to be here, alone, night after night," he said, quietly, "I want you to consider staying with Lucius and Narcissa, at least a few nights a week — and I think, perhaps, that you should invite Gerald to stay with you when you _are_ here."

" _What?_ " she managed, " _Seriously_? You'd really allow me to have _Gerald_ stay here — as in _overnight_?"

"I'd _rather_ you stay with your aunt and uncle, but I know you don't like to be there for very long without me — I know that, for some unimaginable reason, you actually like this house —"

"I do," she said, and even though she didn't love being in it _alone_ , she still loved having it to come home to.

He nodded, and then he looked rather as if he had an asp in his mouth when he continued: "And I know that Gerald is a reasonably skilled duelist and that he does a serviceable job of looking out for you, when you let him — and so, yes, I can't believe that I am saying this, but you are permitted to have him stay here, so long as you continue to keep any — _studying_ — to your room."

That, of course, reminded her of their _other_ recent overnight houseguest. She frowned.

"Mrs. Yaxley…" she started, uncertain of what she'd even say; but she was spared from having to decide, because her father's scowl was instantly back in place, curled lip framing it.

"That is of absolutely no consequence to this situation," he said, firmly, "And as you were not expected to find her here, and you will not find her here again, it is most certainly none of your business."

"So then — so then you're not — " _You're not in love with her, are you?_

Her father's scowl deepened.

"It's not — er, serious?" she said, adjusting her question slightly, in consideration of his increasingly forbidding expression.

"It's not any of your business," he said, with enough finality that she didn't dare press him further.

"Fine," she said, even though it still wasn't, not really. "Then — there's one more thing I need to talk to you about."

"What is it?"

For some reason, she felt a sudden weight in her pocket, as if the letter she still carried there from Sirius Black had suddenly grown heavier; but she couldn't possibly tell him about that, even if she'd wanted to.

"It's Uncle Lucius," she said, instead, feeling her nerves tremble as she thought again about what had happened, that day. "He's been meddling with things at my work…"

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista lay awake, eyes on the square of sky above her bed; she could see the glimmer of distant stars, and she was reminded inexplicably of a night long ago; of a long table at the head of a hall, and the glimmer of different stars, on a different night.

 _Dragons_ , she'd asked her father, _Could we see them, if they flew by overhead?_ She recalled that she had had to look up, to see the shape of his shoulder, and his face beyond. She'd been afraid of the man on his other side, with his long, white beard and the name that she had been trained to hate and to fear; but then, she had been afraid of very nearly everything, back then.

Her father had pretended not to hear her over the din in the hall, and she liked to think now that she'd been on to him, deep down, but it had worked; she'd leaned around him, to direct her question to the very man she had grown up fearing. It had been the first time she could remember willingly speaking to anyone besides her father; it had been the first time that she'd wanted answers more than she'd wanted to stay hidden.

She rolled over, ignoring the urge that was pulsing in her mind; ignoring the flicker of nerves, pulsing at her skin and making her fingers twitch.

She tried to distract herself; she revisited the hundred years she'd lived before evening, and the hundred more that felt like they'd passed since _then_ ; she thought about the Mark, and about everything that she had confessed to Gerald; she thought about the trip to France, which her father had reluctantly agreed to, provided she could give him a fireplace or something called a _tefalon number_ , or something like that, to reach her by.

"A tefalon," (or whatever it was that he'd said), he'd snapped impatiently, when she'd given him her blankest stare, "I _am_ a halfblood, you know; I do know how to use one."

It had taken her several minutes to realise that he must have been referring to whatever device Gerald's uncle had used to call their house, the same jarring device that Amelia had at her house. She'd scowled at him resentfully.

"Well, _I_ don't," she'd pointed out, "I hardly even know what you're talking about."

"Gerald can show you," he'd said, seeming slightly surprised that she didn't know; but how _would_ she? "It's really not difficult, as long as you know the number, but you won't even need to dial; just tell me before you go what the number is where you're going, and I'll find somewhere to call you from."

She rolled over again, and recalled the _other_ matter that she and her father had discussed. He had admitted that he'd known Lucius had donated a sizeable sum of money to St. Mungo's hospital, for her department, and he had known that his intention was to direct the hospital to sign the paperwork that would allow her to work with the Committee, and Calista had gone through such a strange, twisting storm of emotions that day that she found she hardly had enough anger left to hold it against her father that he hadn't told her, ahead of time, what he'd known Lucius was planning.

Severus claimed that he had not expected the extent of Lucius' demands, or the situation that it put her in, and when she thought about _that_ , she found that she did have enough anger left to feel it, after all. She had made it clear to her uncle on numerous occasions that she didn't want him meddling on her behalf, and yet, he had done it yet _again_ , and in a manner that left himself better off as well, as far as she could tell from the deals he'd struck as part of the arrangement.

When she explained all of that to her father, she had been shocked that, once again, he agreed with Gerald, more or less; he understood why she was upset, but he didn't seem to understand just _how_ upset she was, and like Gerald, he thought she ought to make the most of the situation.

"But why do you care if any of them _like_ you?" her father had asked, and she recalled his disdain on each of the few occasions where she'd pointed out that one of his students held a favourable opinion of him. "Let them do their jobs, and you do yours." He'd smirked a bit then, and added: "Or as much of it as you feel like, I suppose."

She'd _almost_ forgiven his answer, until he'd added one last sentiment:

"Oh, and do be certain that Gaspard Shingleton knows it's a _Snape_ that's responsible for having his wretched cauldrons taken out of service, yes?"

"I'm _not_ responsible for it," she'd said, voice rising, "That's the entire point I've been trying to make."

She'd thought, at the time, that he meant for her to imply just that, that she'd been the reason for the cauldron change, but when she reflected now, her father had had the _oddest_ look on his face when he'd said it, and though she knew it was her uncle that owned stock in the new cauldron company, she couldn't quite keep herself from remembering that it was her father's favoured brand, too.

She shifted onto her back, looking defiantly up at the stars again. She was tired of being caught in the middle of schemes that had nothing to do with her; she was tired of being afraid, always, of the night, of which of her darkest fears would appear in her next nightmare, and she was tired of waking up and finding that another of her nightmares had manifested during her waking hours; perhaps most of all, she was tired of _waiting_ , of not knowing what was coming next, of being gripped again and again by shadows she should have noticed, creeping towards her…

She was on her feet, before she'd made a conscious decision, and yet, hadn't she _known_ , the very instant she'd accepted the letter that she was going to do just this with it?

She crossed the room to where she'd discarded her clothes, earlier; she stabbed her trembling, twitching fingers into the pocket of her her work robes, and she drew out the folded slip of parchment.

"Dragons," she muttered to herself, and she reflected briefly on the Headmaster's answer, all those years ago, as her fingers tore open the seal.

 _If there were dragons_ , the Headmaster had said, _I should think I'd like to know about them._

She didn't agree with the man on a great many things, as far as she knew, but in _this_ …

 _If something awful were about to happen_ , she'd said to Gerald, just days and a few hundred years ago, _It would be better to know, than just to pretend it's not going to happen._

She opened the letter, and read the words that her mother's cousin, her first rescuer, had written to her.

 _Calista,_

 _It's strange to call you that, now, and not back then; It seems like I should have known, that I must have heard your name somewhere, but if I ever did then I'd forgotten it. I used to forget, or simply choose not to see, a great many things back then. Where I've been since, it wasn't an option._

 _Moony tells me you'll understand what I mean. He says you've seen them, and that they affect you worse than others, and since it's because of me that they were at Hogwarts, I'm sorry, if that's worth anything to you._

 _He also tells me he's heard your voice, and that, actually, so did I, only I didn't know it was you. I don't think I'd have believed it, anyway, even if I did realise who you were. I definitely wouldn't have believed who your father is, or that he'd do right by you in the end. Can't see that great greasy git taking care of anything properly, but Moony says he has, so I guess that just goes to show how much people can surprise you._

 _You'll want to know, of course, if that evil bitch can use the same means of escape that I did, and I'll tell you this: she can't get to you, not by any method I know, but even if she could, I think you've got more guard dogs than you know._

 _Tell Dromeda if you want to hear more from me or write me back._

— _Sirius_


	6. Forewarned is Forearmed

**6\. Forewarned is Forearmed**

Calista's legs carried her autonomously towards the kitchen, or more specifically, towards the coffeepot. She blinked, as she realised that not only had coffee already been made, but a very full mug of it — her favourite mug again, _Espresso patronum_ — was sitting in front of the place at the table that she had come to think of as the very definition of _home_. A full breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast and jelly waited beside the mug, and across from her spot, her father sat, morning paper folded beside his already-cleared plate.

"Good morning," her father said, evenly. Naturally, Calista was immediately suspicious.

"What is it?" she asked, immediately feeling the finger of dread drawing itself down her spine, "Something in the paper? The — not the Mark again, or…?" _Another breakout._ She couldn't bring herself to say it, but she felt something heavy and cold clutching at her heart anyway.

"There's nothing important in the paper," her father said, quickly and firmly; he snatched it up and held it aloft, inviting her to check for herself. "Unless you want to read a biographic profile about the Irish Quidditch Team's Keeper, or another Rita Skeeter scare-mongering piece."

Calista took the paper, not quite believing him; she skimmed the headlines. The Skeeter one dominated, again: _MINISTRY EMPLOYEE GONE MYSTERIOUSLY MISSING._ Calista snorted. Nothing Skeeter wrote ever bore even a passing resemblance to the truth; most likely, the 'missing employee' was someone's office fish.

"All right," she said, setting the paper down, but still not taking her seat, "It's something else, then; you've got bad news, or you're about to make a 'rule' I'm not going to like —"

"Oh, for Merlin's sake," Severus snapped, irritably, "I can't just attempt to do something nice?"

"No," Calista observed, matter-of-factly, " _You_ can't."

Severus' nostrils flared. "Sit down, Calista. Eat."

She sat, but reached for her mug of coffee first, just in case whatever his _real_ motivation for breakfast had been was something she'd need the additional fortification for.

"I know you're cross with your uncle —" Severus started, and Calista glared, setting her mug down with a small _thud_.

"No" she snarled, "I was _cross_ with him when he spoke with Umbridge behind my back about that blasted letter; and then, when he orchestrated a job offer for me in her office after I'd told him I didn't want him to, I was furious."

"Nevertheless, Calista —"

"And let's not forget his meddling letter, before all of that, the one where he practically threatened to disown me if Gerald turned out to be Muggle-born —"

Her Aunt Andromeda flashed through her mind then, and Calista swallowed a sudden lump in her throat.

"I was livid, then," she went on, harshly, " _Now_ I'm… now I don't even know _what_ I am."

"Well," her father said grimly, "You've a right to feel however you want; but I need you to _act_ as though you are grateful."

Calista promptly dropped her fork; she flinched at the sudden clattering of metal on wood, and ended up with a piece of egg in her lap.

" _What?_ "

"I spoke to him at length about the situation yesterday; not only do I believe that his genuine wish was to help you, but as it turns out —"

"Excuse me?" Calista interrupted; she plucked the bit of egg from her lap, and suppressed a sudden urge to fling it across the table at her father. "His _genuine wish was to help me_ , so he made St. Mungo's switch all their potions suppliers to companies he's got significant stakes in? Are you sure you haven't gotten me mixed up with his investment portfolio?"

"Your uncle stands to recoup about a thousand Galleons a year from his shares in both companies he asked the hospital to contract with," her father acknowledged, and Calista scowled darkly. She dropped the bit of egg on the table before she _did_ throw it.

"It turns out, however," her father went on, "That the hospital wanted _quite_ a bit of money to risk offending that old gasbag Shingleton and his idiot trophy wife; Lucius initially pressed for his portrait to be removed and that daft twit fired as well, but in the end he had to compromise. The most important aspect, of course, was ensuring that you would be free to work with the Committee, and that the department managers could not retaliate against you. Would you like to hazard a guess at precisely what the end result cost him?"

"I really don't care," Calista said, "But I'm certain you're going to tell me, anyway."

Very quietly, Severus listed a sum that made Calista's jaw drop.

" _What?_ " she said, for the second time that morning, once she'd recovered enough to find her breath. "It'll be _ages_ before he makes that back from the contracts — why did he bother?"

"As I've said," her father said, quite evenly, "I believe that his primary intention was to make you happy."

Her scowl returned. "He could've _asked_ me if that's what I wanted."

"I don't think he thought he had to; you've talked of almost nothing else, the last few times we went to visit."

"I wanted _advice_ ," Calista said, "Or commiseration. I didn't want him to _do_ anything."

Severus lifted his brow. "Precisely _when_ ," he posed, "Has your Uncle Lucius shown himself to be anything but a man of action?"

"Wait — so this is _my_ fault now?" She eyed the bit of egg again, sorely tempted.

"Let me ask you something," her father said, changing tacks slightly, "What is the difference in your mind between this — Lucius fixing your problems at work — and my collaboration with Professor Flitwick to get you in front of the Committee for Experimental Charms?"

Calista blinked, caught slightly off-guard by the question.

"It's _completely_ different," she said, firmly, grasping for a way to articulate precisely how it was.

"How?" he pressed, "In both cases, negotiations were conducted and plans made without your knowledge or direct input. Both cases righted a particular wrong against you, and both cases got you what you wanted — that is, the chance to work on your research with the Committee."

"It's different because you just shared my research with the Committee members, and told them about that stupid letter. You didn't have to throw Galleons around, essentially _bribing_ someone —"

"No," Severus agreed, interrupting her, "I didn't; but then, you also don't cast spells with a cauldron. Your Uncle merely used the best tool for the particular task at hand, just as I did, and just as Professor Flitwick did."

"All right then," Calista said, positively fuming again, "It's different because everyone at work _hates_ me now. They're calling me 'Princess Callie' and — and saying I just throw money around to get what I want."

"So?"

"What do you mean, ' _so_ '? You think it's fun spending the whole day standing over a cauldron full of potentially explosive materials while surrounded by people who hate your guts?"

It was Severus' turn to blink, now.

"I'm certain I have no idea what that's like," he said, sardonically. Calista flushed.

"I'm not all right with this," she said, stubbornly, "And I'm not ready to spend all evening tomorrow acting like I am."

Severus snarled. "You're acting like a child about this."

" _I'm_ acting like a child? For having a moral objection to bribery —"

"Your objection isn't to bribery, Calista, it's to _Lucius_ , and it's becoming painfully obvious; if you can't accept his generosity gracefully in this situation, you will put us both in a very difficult position."

Suddenly, the heat which had only been simmering before was at a boil; the familiar press of it settled beneath her skin.

"So first I have no say in what happens, and now I have no say in how I can feel about it?"

Severus clenched his jaw. "As I said," he hissed, clearly exasperated, "You can _feel_ however you want about it; I simply need you to _act_ —"

"No," she interjected, hotly, "I won't. If I'm not allowed to tell him how I really feel about how his actions 'on my behalf' affected _me_ , then I'm not going to tell him anything. I'm not going."

"Calista, we _always_ go to the Malfoys' the last weekend before school."

"Yes, well. I'm not going back to school, am I?"

"Calista," he hissed, impatiently.

She dragged her coffee mug over to herself and swallowed the rest of its contents, despite the fact that they were only lukewarm by this point; she tried to look as dignified as possible over the mug's rim.

"I'm not going," she repeated, setting her now-empty mug down firmly, "And maybe it's for the best — you know how things tend to just _come out_ around Uncle Lucius and Aunt Narcissa when I'm upset." Her anger wasn't retreating, like she expected it to. Instead, it flared brighter, making her spitefully add: "I think Mrs. Yaxley knows that, too —"

Severus' face turned ugly, then. "Lucius and Narcissa are already aware of that particular situation, as it happens," he said, in the sort of tone he usually reserved for assigning detentions, "But it's nice to know that it's only bribery you 'morally object' to, and not blackmail."

Immediately, she felt a flood of guilt; at last, far too late, her rage receded.

"I just — I mean — " she floundered. Severus rose, clearing his own dishes.

"Don't come, then," he said, dismissively, setting his plate and mug in the sink. "You're an adult, I suppose, no matter whether you're acting like one."

She rose, too, dropping her own mug hurriedly into the sink, and making to follow him out of the kitchen.

"Dad, I —" _I'm sorry._ She choked on the words; they wouldn't come out.

"Yes?" he said, expectantly.

 _I'm sorry_. She knew what she had to say, but again, she felt the words die in her throat. She frowned, lowering her gaze.

"I have to go to work," she muttered, instead.

His nostrils flared; he stopped in the doorway, taking enough space that it would be impossible for her to get by, without pushing him out of the way.

"You have to _eat_ ," he said, through gritted teeth, gesturing to her practically untouched plate of food. Her fork still lay on the table where she'd dropped it, near the beginning of their conversation.

"I'm going to be late."

"We've already established that there's nothing your boss can do about it if you are," Severus said, rather snidely, and then: "Before you decide to continue arguing with me, it's only fair that I disclose how very _tempting_ it would be, just now, to shove those bloody eggs down your throat."

"What a coincidence," she snapped, not worried for even a fraction of an instant that he would actually carry out the threat, " _I_ nearly threw them in your face."

Severus' face twisted into a dark, humourless smirk.

"Nearly?" he said, bitterly, "And here I was, thinking you already had."

Another wave of guilt lapped at her temples, but before she could surface from it, he had already left the room; she heard the swish of his cloak, and further away, the firm click of the locking mechanism on the hinged bookcase that led upstairs.

Calista emptied her plate into the rubbish-bin, wordlessly. She knew if she tried to take a bite now, it would come immediately back up; her stomach settled into a familiar hard, tight knot. She washed the dishes, knowing it wasn't enough of a peace offering, but unable to make herself do anything more substantive.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

"So I'm still not clear," Amelia Slater said, around a mouthful of beef, "What exactly the problem is. And by the way, I thought you said you wanted to meet for lunch, not to stare at a bowl of soup like it's full of dementors."

Calista scowled. "Haven't you been _listening_? I've been telling you what the problem is — and _by the way_ , you're not nearly as amusing as you think you are."

"I assume you're accusing me of underestimating my comedic prowess," Amelia said smartly, "What can I say? Humility is one of my strong suits."

Calista snorted. "Right, and a placid temperament is one of mine."

"Now that you mention it," Amelia said, swallowing a mouthful of food, and eyeing her friend meaningfully, "You have been a bit of a snarly bitch again, lately. I mean, since we're on the subject, and all."

"Oh, am I? Maybe it's because literally _everything_ in my life is going all wrong, which is what I've been trying to tell you for the past twenty minutes —"

"Calista, shut up," Amelia interrupted, matter-of-factly, " _Everything_ isn't going wrong, you're just looking at it all in the worst possible light, as usual. Fighting with your dad is nothing new, and anyway, in a few more days he'll be back at Hogwarts and you'll be shagging Gerry in every room of your house —"

" _Amelia!_ I most certainly will _not_ be —"

"This rubbish at work will blow over once everyone gets used to it," Amelia went on, voice rising to drown out Calista's protesting, "And even if it doesn't, so what? You didn't like most of them in the first place, and once you start working with the Charms geeks, they'll want you all the time anyway. Oh, and on top of all that, did I _mention_ you're about to have your Dad's house all to yourself and you can have parties every weekend —"

"Definitely not."

" — _and_ you've got a nauseatingly thoughtful boyfriend who's so mad for you that he's taking you to _France_ practically on a whim. I mean, shit, Calista, he's not even my type and _I'd_ have gladly let him boff me if I knew that was going to be the reward — "

Calista felt herself flushing scarlet. "You're _so_ crass," she said, through gritted teeth, "And anyway, you're wrong, because I'm not."

"Not what? Not going, or not boffing Ger?"

"I — not as if it's really your business, but, well, both. I mean, yeah, _if_ I go, we're probably going to — but I'm possibly _not_ going to Marseille, I still haven't asked for the time, and we're also not — I mean, we haven't — it's going to be the first time —"

Amelia's brows shot up. " _Still_?" she said, incredulously, "You mean, that's _two_ guys now who were willing to take you all the way to France just for a shot at your —"

" _Amelia!_ "

"What's it made of?" her friend went on, almost wonderingly, "Gold? Unicorn hide?"

"You're _foul_ ," Calista accused, eyes narrowing. "Why am I even friends with you?"

"Because I'm basically the only one who'll put up with you," Amelia said, with a maddeningly casual air. "Anyway, I better get back to work. Wish _my_ uncle would donate a ton of money so I could do whatever I wanted…"

Calista glowered dangerously. "That's _not_ funny!"

"Not joking, am I?" Amelia caught sight of Calista's expression and rolled her eyes. "Whatever, Calista, eat your goddamned soup, will you?"

Even though her lunch hour spent with Amelia had been thoroughly annoying, she found that her stomach _had_ unknotted just enough that she felt like she could eat. She pulled the tepid soup bowl closer, muttering a warming spell.

"And seriously, mate," Amelia added, cheekily, over her shoulder, "I mean this in the most affectionate way possible, but get stuffed and go to Marseille — reckon it'll do wonders for your barmy attitude."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Gerald Boot fingered the handle of his still-full and now decidedly flat mug of ale, as if the movement would release some of the tension in his hands, as if wrapping his fingers around the mug might ease his scrambled thoughts.

He couldn't stop seeing the sharp, spiky shapes of the runes, couldn't resist wondering what had left dark, unsettling splotches on the last roll of parchment; most of all, he couldn't stop seeing the way that Mira's eyes and face had gone hard, when she'd found out what he had done.

' _Gerry, what's this?'_

He could recall precisely the way that surprise had welled up in him, an inflating balloon, when Mira had held up the still-creased purple memo, plucked freshly out of the air. He had instantly recognised the seal at the bottom of the memo; it was from the Minister for Magic's Office.

' _He's actually responded?'_ Gerald had said, feeling the first misguided stirrings of relief; he hadn't expected a response, not after the way the Ministry in general had thoroughly disregarded his warnings about the dementors at Hogwarts. He remembered wondering if it was the very dire situation that had unfolded there, parallelling his warnings almost perfectly, that made Fudge take him seriously this time; or perhaps it was more than that. Perhaps, in his time here, in the Runes Office, he had managed to make more of a name, more of a _credibility_ for himself than he even realised. The balloon had swelled in his gut, coming dangerously close to pride. He forgot to remind himself that he had no business feeling that way, and that was probably the reason that it had all gone wrong.

' _Oh, yes,'_ Mira had said, and the narrowing of her eyes, the tightening of her mouth, were the first indication he had that he'd made a mistake. ' _He's responded, all right. He wants to know how many hours we've wasted poring over rubbish folk tales from Albania, instead of focusing on our real work. He's questioning whether our office might be overstaffed, if we have time to pursue this sort of foolishness.'_

Gerald recalled the sour feeling in his throat, when the balloon had begun to deflate.

' _It's not foolishness,'_ he had told her, but already, he had lost sight of the weight of confidence, just days ago, that had driven him to write the letter to Fudge in the first place. ' _You've seen the scrolls, and it's just too uncanny, with everything else going on, now. Telling him what we've decoded was the right thing to do.''_

It _had_ been the right thing, hadn't it? Certainly, it had seemed so in the darkest hours of the early morning, when he'd lain awake, turning and twisting away from the words that had wound their way solidly in and around his skull, relentlessly, since the first time Calista had said them, days and also lifetimes ago: _If something awful were coming… it would be better to know, that to just pretend it's not going to happen._

' _That wasn't your decision to make, Gerry,'_ Mira had said, mouth folding in on itself, ' _I thought we agreed to finish the translation, and then bring it to Mr. Rubik first —'_

' _That was before the Mark appeared,'_ Gerald could remember the way the words had twisted out of his mouth, tasting warm and sour, but already, he had felt the slickness of uncertainty under his skin. _Had_ he acted rashly, and unprofessionally, in writing to the Minister, and to — and he wasn't certain Mira even knew about this yet — Mr. Crouch, of Magical Law Enforcement?

It hadn't seemed like a mistake, when he'd been huddled close with Calista, hearing his own abstract fears echoed and personalised by hers; writing the letter hadn't seemed rash, during the long stretch of night he'd laboured over it, wondering if he was doing _enough_ to impress upon the Ministry's leaders just how bleakly the clues were starting to connect…

Gerald frowned, hunching his shoulders, overwhelmed by the flood of shame and of uncertainty; what if he _had_ done the wrong thing? What if he was wrong, and he really was finding omens where he should have found only luridly morbid fiction?

His fingers tightened reflexively around the warm, slightly damp glass on the bar in front of him, as the din of the room shifted in and out of his awareness. It was the second glass he'd ordered, and even though he'd pawned the first off on one of Chadwick's friends, this time, inexplicably, he was tempted to find out what the bottom of the glass looked like.

He glanced down the length of the pub's crowded bar once more, eyeing his older cousin Chadwick for the nth time that night. Chadwick didn't _look_ cross with him. He'd seemed puzzled when Gerald had offered not to come after all. But then, it was Chadwick's stag night, and the memo had only come in yesterday; maybe Mira simply hadn't had a chance to tell him yet, what Gerald had done.

What if he decided, once he found out, that Gerald's actions had potentially jeopardised his fiancé's job? What if it caused Chadwick to decide he was no longer so keen on his younger cousins? He and Terry had only recently been welcomed into the Boot family; would his mistake exile them again, the way that his father's mistakes had?

A wave of nausea gripped him, and suddenly his throat was very dry and his hands were unbearably cold. He had a sudden, uncharacteristically reckless thought that he was probably going to lose to his father in court, anyway; why not start the trend now… he shifted his grip on the glass, preparing his fingers to take the weight of it properly; here was one thing that he could get to the bottom of, without ruining anyone else's life —

"Come on, love, tell me your name, then; you're _cute_ , ain't you?"

Gerald started, cheeks flushing with colour, as something — or rather, _someone_ — jostled his arm, nearly sending the whole mug flying.

It was a girl, he realised, trying to still the sudden and rapid beating of his heart; a girl probably somewhere around his own age, perhaps a few years older, with long brown hair and a dress that seemed, even to his untrained eye, to be entirely too fancy for the sort of pub they were in. It reminded him of the sorts of things he only saw Calista wearing when he visited her at her uncle's manor.

"Erm, sorry?" he managed to mumble. What did she want? Had she asked him to move, or…?

He struggled to disentangle his thoughts, to unwind them from the dark spiral they'd been heading down. It felt like such a mad juxtaposition, suddenly; the heavy, blood-spattered pages of runes, and then this overbright, overnoisy Muggle pub.

The girl was eying him with a raised eyebrow now, as if she were beginning to suspect there might be something off about him; he felt a flush of embarrassment, transported briefly and inexplicably back to his primary school days, and he braced himself for her to laugh at him, or perhaps to push him over.

"Your _name_ ," the girl said, leaning towards him a bit, ostensibly so he could hear her better. She smiled sweetly, which did little to ease his confusion. "What's your _name_ , hon?"

"Oh! It's… uh, it's Gerald, and I… erm…"

He paused. He should mention the fact that he had a girlfriend, right? He was fairly certain from the way she was smiling at him that he ought to, but then again, would it seem presumptuous? What if this girl was only trying to be friendly? What if she was someone that Chadwick or one of his friends knew, and she shouted at him or called him out for being rude, if that was the first thing he said to her?

He glanced down the length of the bar yet again, this time hoping for help, but his cousin was heavily engaged in a very loud and evidently amusing conversation with a couple of his mates _and_ a couple of the girls, some of which they all seemed to know, and some of whom they'd just met here, or perhaps it was at the last pub. It was honestly all starting to blur together now, even though he had yet to _actually_ drink any of the ale he'd ordered.

"Gerald?" the girl asked, leaning over; he felt her hair falling over the back of his hand, and smelled the mingled sweetness of wine and a floral perfume as she leaned closer to him. "Mind if I call you Gerry?"

"I don't mind," he said, and as soon as the words were out of his mouth, the girl had squirmed closer, and now, suddenly, she was _touching his leg_ , and swinging her hair again, and _what the hell was he supposed to do_ _now_? When he looked frantically down the bar again, another girl was leaning over Chadwick's shoulder, swinging her hair in more or less the same way, and he didn't seem bothered by it in the least; was this just the way things _were_ , at Muggle pubs?

"My name's Vicky, and I'll let you buy me a drink now, Gerry," the brunette beside him said, uncomfortably close to his ear; he felt it burning up and the girl giggled.

"Ooh, you're just _too_ adorable, Gerry," Vicky said, sounding quite pleased; she signaled the bartender and ordered something called a spritzer, and when the barman looked to Gerald for payment, he didn't know what else to _do_ so he threw a couple of notes on the bar; it was probably entirely too much, but perhaps once he'd purchased the drink, the girl would move on, to one of Chadwick's other friends, or better yet, to another group entirely —

 _Oh, shit_. The enormity of his mistake landed on him at precisely the same time that the girl did; she giggled again, when he started so enormously that he nearly knocked both of them off the barstool and onto the ground; for a moment he struggled between his panicked desire to get the girl _off_ of him as quickly as possible and explain the mistake and his instinct not to let a girl fall on the floor; he ended up on his feet, catching her awkwardly, which seemed, unfortunately, to send entirely the wrong message.

"Oh, what a gentleman," Vicky said, delightedly, placing her hand on his chest to steady herself, "Most guys try and sneak a handful when I get clumsy like that, but you're being perfectly polite."

She narrowed her eyes, still miraculously balancing the spritzer in her free hand; she didn't appear to have spilled a drop, which made Gerald wonder a bit suspiciously precisely how 'clumsy' Vicky actually was. "You're not gay, are you?" she said, bluntly, and Gerald felt an odd flush of relief. At last, she'd finally given him the perfect opening to set things straight —

"Nah, you aren't dressed nice enough," she said, before he had even opened his mouth to tell her about Calista, "I can always tell; you're just shy, aren't you hon?"

"I'm actually in a rel —"

"You don't need to be shy with _me_ ," Vicky went on, heedless of his attempted interruption, "I already like you, see?"

"Erm, thank you, but erm… Vicky, is it?"

She nodded coyly, wrapping long-nailed fingers around his forearm, and slinking closer to him.

"I like how you say it," she said, looking up at him through her lashes, and Gerald was suddenly irrationally certain that Calista was going to burst into this random Muggle pub in the middle of an East London neighbourhood that was miles away from where she lived or had any business being, and really, it was for this poor Muggle's girl's _safety_ that he had better put an end to this _now_. Ah,and perhaps for his _own_ safety, from the way he imagined things were starting to look.

"Vicky, you're very nice, but I should tell you that I have a girlfriend."

Vicky blinked; her fingers tightened, nails digging the fabric of his sleeve painfully into his skin.

"You _what_?" she said, face twisting up in either contempt or confusion.

"I have a girlfriend," he repeated, a bit more loudly, relieved to have finally gotten it out in the open, "We've been dating for more than a year and a half and I —"

"You _dog!_ "

Gerald was suddenly interrupted by something cold and sticky splashing him in the face, and a shrill yell that seemed to acquire an unearthly volume; he wondered frantically if Vicky was somehow part Banshee, and scrabbled at his face, pulling his glasses off and wiping them on his sleeve, which was _also_ wet —

"Why the hell'd you go buying me a drink for, then, if you've got a _girlfriend_?" Vicky was shouting, and Gerald had possibly never wanted anything in his life more than he wanted to Disapparate in that moment; the bar had gone quiet, and he was uncomfortably aware that nearly everyone in it was paying attention to their little scene, now; adding insult to injury was the fact that he now smelled like the same sticky-sweet wine mixture that was dripping down his hair and soaking into his shirt.

"I was trying to tell you!" Gerald said, hopelessly; several people were laughing, and to his dismay, he saw that Chadwick was, too — until, that was, he evidently realised the extent of Gerald's dismay, and then, _mercifully_ , he announced that it was time to be moving onto the next stop of the night. Gerald muttered something about waiting outside, and disappeared as quickly as he could into the stifling summer night.

"You all right, Ger?" Chadwick asked him, when the rest of the lads had finished settling their checks and joined him outside. Gerald nodded quickly.

"Erm, I'm fine, but I think I should just go home now."

"Nonsense," Chadwick said, slinging his arm around his younger cousin and leaning on him rather heavily; Gerald caught a whiff of stale ale and something else: whiskey, he thought, and then he was being tugged along, under his cousin's weight and the insistence of his cousin's friends, to the next pub. "Fun's only just starting. Next place'll be better, all right?"

Chadwick's friends were getting quite loud, but his cousin still seemed to be waiting for some sort of affirmative from him.

"I suppose," was all Gerald could manage, but Chadwick didn't seem to mind the silence. As they continued down the pavement, he started chattering, leaning more and more heavily on Gerald's slighter form.

And then, with dawning apprehension, Gerald realised that the noisy pubs had shifted into a different sort of establishment, around them, as they'd kept walking. There were music halls, advertising the names of local acts, but it wasn't those places that made Gerald suddenly nervous.

The gaggle of Chadwick's friends stopped at a particularly seedy-looking place; a large, ham-fisted man with a cigarette dangling from his lips eyed them all suspiciously, and told them it would be 5 pounds each to get in.

"For this bloody place?" one of Chadwick's friends said scornfully, "You really think a dingy place like this is worth five bloody pounds just to get in? They've got better girls across the way, everyone knows that."

"Ten pounds then," the bouncer said, carelessly, and then he spotted Gerald, underneath Chadwick's arm, and pointed in his direction, practically poking him in the chest with a large, none-too-clean finger. "You ain't eighteen," he accused gruffly.

"Oh, erm, no, I'm not," Gerald said, quickly, and technically since he'd just turned nineteen yesterday, it was _true_ , just not precisely in the way he knew the man meant.

To his dismay though, the man simply held out his ham fist, and waggled his fingers, expectantly.

"Fifteen pounds, for you."

"Oh, bloody hell!" Chadwick had suddenly come to life, dragging himself up off of Gerald's shoulder; Gerald winced slightly, as his cousin's fingers dug briefly into his shoulder in his effort to straighten himself out. "No way, lads, no way."

Chadwick's friends laughed, as if this was the most marvelous joke they'd ever had.

"Oh, aye," one of them countered, grinning. "First dance is on me — you don't pay on your own stag do."

"You're damn straight I don't," Chadwick said, "'Cause I'm not having one — come off it, let's go to another pub."

Gerald felt a sudden grateful rush of affection for his cousin; nevermind his qualms about the inherent sexism in a place like this, there was really only _one_ woman he currently wanted to look at like that, and he didn't want to do it in a dark, noisy, and presumably sticky corner of a sketchy bar… he wanted to do it in a perfectly-appointed French budoir, with candlelight and soft music and…

"Oh, is ickle Chaddy afwaid of getting in trouble?" another of Chadwick's friends, Ben, quipped; a few of them laughed, but Gerald noticed that a couple of them were starting to look slightly uncomfortable, too.

"Mira doesn't want me to go," Chadwick said, steadfast despite his slight lilt, a softness like marbles in his mouth. "So I'm not going. Anyway, this place is kind of rank, guys —"

"Fuck off, all o' ye," the bouncer growled, "It's twenty pounds each now, and neither one of these blokes is getting in at all."

He gestured to Chadwick and Gerald; a few of Chadwick's friends grumbled, and Ben started arguing, shouting drunkenly that it was "Chaddy's stag night, damn it", but Chadwick slung his arm around Gerald again.

"Fine with me," he said, defiantly, "Fine with us; Right, Ger?"

"Erm — yes, that's perfectly fine," Gerald agreed, quickly.

A brief ongoing disagreement between a few of Chadwick's rowdier friends concluded rather quickly, when the bouncer decided he didn't want any of them there, after all and howled at them to move on, or else; Ben and a few of the others elected to try the establishment across the lane, which looked only marginally less seedy to Gerald, but soon enough, the rest of them were heading down a side street full of the sorts of neighbourhood pubs they'd been crawling all night.

"Hope you're not disappointed," Chadwick said, still slurring slightly, as they strolled past a series of open doors; music and laughter spilled out from them sporadically. "Just didn't like the look of that place — makes me wonder if the girls even want to work there, you know, or if they just…?"

He shrugged. "And anyway, wasn't lying, Mira would _not_ be happy with me." Chadwick grinned then, and poked his finger into Gerald's ribs; he just barely managed to suppressed an instinctive wince.

"Reckon Calista wouldn't be too pleased either, eh?"

"Definitely not," Gerald confirmed; and then, he slid a glance towards his cousin, and managed a crooked smile. "Did I ever tell you, in sixth year — her fifth — she sent our _Defense Professor_ to the hospital wing? I mean, he thoroughly deserved it, that was the one I told you about that was attacking students — but let's just say I'm pleased she's always been on _my_ side, when it comes to a duel."

Chadwick guffawed. "Shit, Ger, really? As if it's not enough to have ol' Snapeto be afraid of — I still can't believe you're dating his daughter and living to tell the tale."

"I'm not terribly afraid of Prof — of Severus," Gerald said, "He really _is_ reasonable, most of the time." He reflected, and then added: "Mind you, I'd rather not be anywhere in the vicinity when the two of _them_ get to arguing; they wind each other up like nothing you've ever seen."

"Oh, _Merlin_ , I can only imagine," Chadwick chuckled. "Fortunately, it's just the good old silent treatment that I'm trying to avoid — Mira's rubbish at dueling, but definitely don't tell her I said that, or I'll be talking to my bedroom walls for a month."

"I won't say a word," Gerald promised, sincerely.

"Appreciate it," Chadwick said, and then: "Hey, Ger? Was something bothering you tonight? I mean, before that girl threw her drink on you."

Gerald blinked, caught slightly off-guard. "What makes you ask me that?" he said, carefully. Was _he_ going to have to explain what had happened in the Runes Office yesterday?

"You've been right quiet," Chadwick said, "And I saw you giving your ale to Ben, at the Gutted Cow."

"Oh." Gerald felt a flush of warmth, and he looked away. For some reason, he was now absurdly and disproportionately ashamed that he very nearly _had_ downed the second ale, before Vicky had come along. "I… erm, I just don't really drink much, I guess." _At all,_ he added silently; but Chadwick and his friends were certain to think he was a bore if he said so.

"Oh," Chadwick said, and then, a moment later, " _Oh._ Right, of course — because of your old man, right?"

Gerald blinked, momentarily startled. He'd never told Chadwick that was the reason; he'd never told anyone but Calista.

"Makes sense," Chadwick went on, "Runs in families, right? The dependency, I mean. And Granddad… I mean, at least he was never an arsehole like Uncle Brandon, but in the old days, let him catch sight of a whiskey bottle and it was only a matter of time before he ended up wearing a lampshade."

Gerald found himself choking back a burst of unexpected laughter. " _Really?_ I thought Granddad didn't drink."

"Well, not anymore," Chadwick agreed, "Sometime after he was banned from every home decor shop in the London metropolitan area, Grams told him if he threw up in her garden one more time, he was going to have to live in it, and that was pretty much the end of that. Reckon that was eight or ten years ago; Christmas parties used to be interesting before that, let me tell you."

Eight or ten years ago. _Before_ Brandon Boot had gone to Azkaban; before Gerald's testimony to the Wizengamot had sent him there; and before Gerald had even realised he'd had a Grams and a Granddad, and cousins like Chadwick. He felt a soft weight settle along the back of his shoulders, and it took him the space of several seconds to realise that that it was in fact Chadwick's arm again, and not some particularly tangible manifestation of melancholy.

"Oh, excellent, the Fig and Pickle," Chadwick said, as their group drew up to the open doorway of a quieter, run-down looking sort of pub. "Haven't been here since I was tossed out the summer before sixth year for Confunding the barkeep into thinking I was old enough to be here without Dad."

Gerald gaped, mildly alarmed. "You _Confunded_ a Muggle just to get into a pub? Chadwick, that's a serious violation of the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, not to _mention_ the International Statute of Secrecy —"

"Don't I know it, Head Boy," Chadwick quipped, as they ducked into the pub's dim, somewhat stale-smelling interior. "Thought you weren't going to mention it."

"Chadwick, you work for the Department of Misinformation, if that ever got out —"

Chadwick grinned, tightening his grip, and pulling Gerald in towards him; he could smell the same piney-stale smell of ale on his cousin that the pub's sticky surfaces emitted in spades. "I'd tell 'em they were Misinformed," he guffawed, "C'mon, let's grab a table — reckon the lads'll bring some ale over, but you don't have to have any if you don't want to."

Four or five of Chadwick's friends did come over then, with an armload of ale tankards and a sweating glass of water.

"Here ya go, Chaddy, a drink as weak your excuse not to go into the club," one of his friends roared as the others tittered. He set the water in front of Chadwick; the rest of them burst into laughter practically before he'd finished the sentence.

Gerald winced, but Chadwick, however, didn't seem bothered by his friend's jibe in the least; he reached rather smartly over the glass for one of the tankards — or at least, it _would_ have been smartly, had he not knocked it over, sending suds spilling across the table and onto the floor. Gerald leapt up, but not before he was thoroughly soaked, again.

"Ah, fuck me," Chadwick muttered, promptly grabbing another tankard and lifting it to his mouth; he drained a good quarter of it, and set it down with a thud.

"Isn't that Mira's job?" one of his friends quipped, sending the others into roars of laughter again.

"Job?" Chadwick echoed, lifting a brow and the tankard, "Privilege, is more like it. So happens I'm a fantastic lay, which is one of the many reasons I'm marrying the most beautiful woman in all of London in a couple of weeks, while _you lot_ will still be down in the East End, ogling girls who won't give you the time of day unless you give them a tenner first."

Chadwick's friends erupted into a roar of approving laughter; one of them slugged Chadwick gently on the shoulder, and Chadwick grinned.

"Yeah, all right," he said, and then, "Reckon we'll go talk to those girls over there, at least until another drink gets thrown. Wish us luck, yeah?"

Gerald flushed, occupying himself with vain attempts to dry his clothing with the ale-stained rag that someone had brought over to him. Once he was as dry as he imagined he was going to get, and convinced that he smelled like a bloody distillery, he perched gingerly on the edge of his chair again, slightly off-put by the realisation that Chadwick was watching him.

"Sorry about that," Chadwick said, gesturing to the soaked rag that Gerald had set back on the table, "I guess I'm a bit more pissed than I realised."

"Oh. It's all right," Gerald said, even though it really wasn't; he couldn't wait to Apparate home, and take a proper hot shower and… and stare at his bedroom ceiling, too exhausted to do anything else, but too anxious to sleep. He felt his mouth pulling down.

"'Course, it's your own fault, really," Chadwick said, "Buying me a drink and all when you've already got a girl…"

Gerald looked up quickly; Chadwick was grinning devilishly.

"Now that I've got your attention," his cousin said, attempting and failing utterly at a more sobering expression, "Why don't you tell me what's really going on? I can tell something's eating you…"

Before he could stop himself, Gerald launched into a quiet explanation of the strange series of documents that had been showing up in the Runes Office over the last few months; the grisly descriptions of mutilated and murdered animals, particularly rats; the string of unexplained disappearances; and finally, the letter he'd written to the Minister and the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, explaining it all…

"Yeah, Mira's been telling me about most of that," Chadwick finally interrupted, "I've been poring through the records _we_ have, in my office, but so far, I haven't been able to find much to substantiate the reports you've been translating. That woman who disappeared from Magical Games and Sports, Berta Jiminy, or whatever —"

"Bertha Jorkins," Gerald supplied, immediately.

"Right, her," Chadwick said, waving his hand, "The thing is, there's nothing except a bunch of sensationalist articles by that crackpot Skeeter to indicate that there was anything suspicious about her disappearance, and if there really _was_ something off about it, we'd undoubtedly have been asked to cover it up already, but we haven't."

"Still," Gerald said, frowning, "You've got to admit, it's uncanny, all of this going on in the same place — what about the uptick in Muggles reporting hauntings?"

"Muggles call anything they can't explain a 'haunting'. Some poor bloke probably stumbled across a doxy nest, got himself bit, and started spreading tales at the local pub — you know that's where the whole rubbish notion of 'fairy circles' in the woods came from, right? Doxy venom's known to cause hallucinations in Muggles, and there are loads of them in Albania."

"What about the unicorn they found drained of blood?" Gerald pressed, keeping his voice low despite the fact that no one in the dingy pub — not even Chadwick's friends now they'd found a group of young women to chat up — seemed to be paying them much mind, "And all the dead rats?"

Chadwick glanced around when Gerald said 'unicorn', to ensure they weren't being listened to. "Never heard they found any proof of that," he said, "Might well've been a pig or a horse — vampires in Albania too, you know, and with all the restrictions against feeding on Muggles after Vlad Drakul was caught, some of 'em have gotten pretty creative with their food sources. As for the rats, _and_ as for Bertha Jorkins…"

Chadwick shifted, sliding his tankard closer to himself, and hunched over it.

"Look, Ger, Mira told me about your letter to Crouch and Fudge, and I took a walk over to Crouch's office myself yesterday after she told me. He wasn't very pleased with your department and _especially_ not with you, but I tried to talk him down a bit, and I _asked_ him about it all, since I know Mira was worried."

"She — you know about that?" And he hadn't been disinvited from tonight's festivities?

Chadwick nodded, now wearing a frown almost identical to Gerald's. "Yeah, she was pretty peeved; I mean, she recommended you, y'know, so it makes her look bad when you go and do something over her head like that —"

"I'm sorry," Gerald muttered, "I didn't mean —" but Chadwick was waving his hand again.

"I know, I know," he said, "You were trying to do what you thought was right. Mira knows too, but it'll take her awhile to admit it. But listen, I asked Crouch straight out about the rats: it's an epidemic, simple as that. Some sort of flesh-eating parasite or something, he said, he's been meaning to get my office on it. And as for Bertie Jergens—"

"Bertha Jorkins," Gerald said, again.

"Yeah, her," Chadwick said, carelessly, "Evidently, she's as nutty as a fruitcake. Crouch says he's got it on good word she made it to her cousin's place safely. Reckons she's off in the mountains somewhere, completely oblivious of the fact that she's due back at work. He says she's been under a lot of stress what with all the preparations for the Quidditch Cup and she's already half-mad as it is, shows up hours late all the time and gets lost on the way from the water fountain to her desk."

Gerald felt a sudden and peculiar rush of lightness; he nearly laughed with relief, as if he'd just had a shot of gigglewater. A parasite was killing all the rats? Bertha Jorkins was simply forgetful? And Chadwick had a point, there _were_ a lot of doxies _and_ vampires in Albania, and didn't it typically hold true that the simplest explanation was often the right one?

"So it's all just coincidence?" Gerald asked, "Just a series of events that seem inexplicable when taken together, but can be easily and logically explained when examined individually?"

"Seems that way," Chadwick confirmed. "Ol' Barty Crouch is an unlikeable stiff, but he's a man of staunch logic; if he says all's well, then I believe it. And besides, don't you think I'd know if there was some kind of massive Ministry coverup? I'm second-in-command of the office that _handles Ministry coverups_."

Gerald swallowed. His mouth was suddenly very dry. He reached across the table for the still-sweaty glass of water Chadwick's friends had brought, and slid it towards himself. "I suppose you have a point."

"'Course I do," Chadwick said, with a decidedly smug air of self-satisfaction. "I'm clever enough too, even if I never _was_ a Bighead Boy —"

"Stop it," Gerald muttered, dangerously close to flushing again. "It's not like I ever made a big deal out of it." He hadn't; not like he knew Percy had, although he _did_ have to admit that he'd felt a particularly stirring swell of pride during that very first Prefect meeting of his seventh year, on the train, when Calista had come in late and noticed right away that he was heading the meeting…

It had been hard, that day, to convince himself that he didn't notice her every time she walked past, that he didn't look for her every time he walked into the library… it had been harder, still, to ignore the sour, acrid feeling he'd been getting, back then, in the back of his throat every time he'd see her with Flint, or to pretend that that _grin_ she'd aimed at him, when she'd walked into the front compartment and noticed his new badge, hadn't replayed tantalisingly in his mind for the next several nights, as he'd tried to fall asleep.

Still, he _had_ ignored it, and denied it, and he'd been doing a halfway decent job of it, until one day, _that day_ , after Filch's cat had been found Petrified and a strange and frightening message had been painted across one of the castle walls, and _still_ , Amelia Slater had come flouncing back into the common room the very next day with news that was a hundred times more shocking and infinitely more welcome:

' _It's finally happened_ ,' she'd cackled, making a beeline for the armchair where Penny Clearwater had been deeply engrossed in a thick volume about, he thought, chess strategy. He recalled frowning with irritation, and hunching closer over his homework, and then —

' _Calista dumped Quidditch Boy!'_

Gerald took a massive sip of his water now, heart thudding instinctively at the memory, just as it had in the moment.

' _She — huh?'_ Gerald had practically leapt up from his work, textbook held protectively to his chest. _'Calista_ Snape? _'_ he'd echoed, like an idiot, as if there had been any other Calista at Hogwarts, _'She final— er, she broke it off with Flint?'_

Both girls had been squealing and chattering then, sounding not unlike a particularly spirited nest of doxies themselves and _actually_ not unlike the group of girls Chadwick's friends had gone over to talk to, tonight; their chattering and laughter brought him slowly and reluctantly back to the present, where his cousin was watching him, once again, with raised eyebrows over the rim of his ale tankard.

"Now what, Ger?" Chadwick asked, with good-natured exasperation, "Don't tell me you've got yet another doom and gloom theory I've got to dispel you of."

"No," Gerald said, shaking his head slowly; his stomach knotted up again now as he cringingly recalled how eagerly he'd questioned _Calista's best friend_ about her breakup and all the details he'd prodded her for, after it had come out that at least part of Calista's reasoning had to do with how Flint had always treated _him_. It had been a miracle, frankly, that neither Amelia or Penny had caught on or told Calista how he'd reacted, because he'd overheard Flint in Divination class a few days later telling his cronies how it wasn't really over and how he planned to win her back, and he'd been taken to task so severely by Flint just for saying ' _She finally figured out she's too good for you, it seems,'_ that it had taken him quite awhile to work up the nerve to even admit to _himself_ how he really felt about her.

"You sure?" Chadwick prodded, in the present. Gerald hunched his shoulders, and took another long sip of water, more to occupy his mouth than for any other reason, so he couldn't go and say something stupid about what was _actually_ going through his mind.

He thought he'd done a decent job of denying his feelings, even after she'd broken it off with Flint, until the night of the Dueling Club, when he'd realised two things simultaneously: that she _definitely_ didn't seem as if she were considering taking Flint back despite all his posturing, and that he, Gerald, was hopelessly and utterly infatuated with her and it was driving him mad to keep pretending he wasn't. Oh, and there had been a third thing, he'd realised, in the same moment: that Flint had broken his nose.

That had hurt very badly, but in the grand scheme of things, the sharp sting across the bridge of his nose, the dull ache in his face, had all been worth enduring since it had, in a manner of speaking, set him officially and firmly on the path that had led him to skipping lunch just so he could arrive twenty minutes early to Arithmancy class and place a meticulously planned bouquet on Calista's desk before anyone else got there.

There had been so many beautiful, priceless moments, scattered along that path like the petals of the yellow flowers he'd left for her: the excited trembling of his fingers, as he'd opened the drawing, her reply to his gift; the way his heart had leapt to see her, that next evening in the library; the soft, tentative first meeting of their mouths, and every single kiss and tender touch they'd shared since then; the way her dark eyes had lit up, the first time and nearly every subsequent time that he'd flirted with her in French; the magnificent warmth of her, when he held her in his arms, and pressed his mouth against the soft blackness of her hair...

He shifted, suddenly recalling other things, too: the soft lace of her bra, the unbearably smooth feel of her skin beneath it,the tantalising physical reaction that he had coaxed from her, the tiny soft sigh that he didn't think she even knew she'd made, eyes clouding with exactly the same heady, intoxicating spell that had gripped him then, and unfortunately was gripping him _now;_ hastily, feeling his cousin's questioning gaze, he fumbled with his water glass, knocking it over into his own lap, _this_ time welcoming the cold splash that brought him back to reality.

"Merlin's balls, Ger," Chadwick laughed, picking up the bar rag from the table and tossing it at him, "Not your night, is it? Come on, I'll help you clean that up."

He came around the table then, and picked up the glass off the floor; and then, before he lost his nerve, Gerald tapped his cousin's elbow, almost pleadingly.

"Chadwick? There, uh… actually, there _is_ one more thing I could use your help with… please don't laugh at me, but I need your advice..."

"Yeah?" Chadwick set the empty cup down on the table, but not before waggling it teasingly in front of his cousin. "With what? Gravity?"

"Erm, not exactly." Gerald took a breath. "I'm taking Calista to Marseille next week, and I think we're finally going to have sex — I mean, we've definitely been talking about it — and I'm worried that I'll hurt her, or be completely awful at it, and she'll end up never wanting me to touch her again."

Chadwick laughed softly, but not unkindly. "Is that all? Ger, you _are_ going to be awful the first time, but chances are, she's not going to know the difference if it's her first time, too."

"What about the rest of it?" Gerald pressed, "I don't want to accidentally hurt her, and I've read that can happen."

"Yeah, I guess it _can_ ," Chadwick said, "But if you're careful, and if you're doing things right, it probably won't. Honestly, I wouldn't put so much pressure on yourself to make it happen at any particular time or in any particular place. Just, you know, have fun with each other and don't worry so much about the end game, you'll get there eventually. Oh, and for Merlin's sake, make sure you cast the spell, even if you think you're not going that far — trust me, once you get into it, you're apt to forget."

"Calista's on the potion," Gerald said, and Chadwick interrupted him, eyes going wide in alarm. He shook his head, vehemently.

"Girls are mad, mate, and they can forget, too; just cast the damn spell, it only feels funny for a second. Seriously, Ger, promise me."

"All right, All right," Gerald said, feeling heat in his cheeks. "I'll use the spell, too. But… let's say we _do_ … er, _get there_. How do I know if I'm doing all right, or not? Is there a book you can recommend, or something?"

"A _book_?" Chadwick rolled his eyes. "No, there isn't a _book_ that can tell you what your girlfriend wants in bed. Just _ask_ her, you bloody swot. It's sex, not Advanced Arithmancy."

Gerald blinked. "Oh. I guess that does make sense."

"'Course it does; didn't you hear me earlier? I'm incredibly gifted in this field. Now, let me get you another drink — water, or would you rather have a pop or something? — and this time, let's try not to have anyone throw it on you."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista and Severus stood an arm's length apart, in the centre of the sitting room of their home at Spinner's End; one of them reached forlornly for the other's elbow, tugging the plain black sleeve in a manner that seemed fidgety, anxious, and protective, all at once.

"Write me once you've arrived," one of them said, a bit peevishly, "Or even better, call me on the fire; that way I'll know you've gotten settled in safely. And if you _can't_ reach me for some reason, please call Uncle Lucius and Aunt Narcissa and have _them_ get hold of me; and be _careful_ , someone's been setting off the Dark Mark, and we still haven't got the faintest idea of who it is or what they hoped to accomplish by summoning it —"

"Calista," Severus interrupted, tiredly but not unkindly, "I _assure_ you that I will be safe at Hogwarts, and I will call often; but I expect you to do the same. Make sure I know where you'll be, every night; if you're going to your aunt's house — either of them — let me know, and if you're staying here, try your best to have someone stay with you; keep the defensive wards in effect, when you leave the house and _especially_ when you're in it alone; I don't expect anyone unfamiliar to come calling, but if they do, _don't_ let them in, and contact me at once."

Calista nodded; and then, gently, Severus extracted his sleeve from her grip, and stepped towards the fireplace.

"You can call me from here," Severus reminded her, "But the _only_ place you can travel to from this grate is my office at Hogwarts, and you mustn't come through this way unless it's a dire emergency. Remember, the Headmaster will be alerted to all travel between here and my office, and he'll shut it down in an instant if he has even the slightest inclination that the connection might pose a risk to school security —"

"But dementors are fine," Calista scowled, "Those don't pose a risk at all, I suppose, or at least, he didn't care about it last year."

"Don't forget werewolves and escaped convicts," Severus said, with a nearly identical scowl, and Calista frowned, feeling and suppressing a brief, sharp flash of guilt, as she tried very hard not to think about a pair of letters that were hidden between pages 394 and 395 of one of her old Defense books — the beginning of the section on werewolves, in fact; an easy page to recall if she wanted to look at the letters again, or if she did eventually decide to write back to either or both of them.

"Calista?" her father said, and she could hear a faint note of suspicion entering his voice, "Is there something in _particular_ that's on your mind, regarding either a werewolf, or an escaped convict?"

Hastily, she cleared her mind, and her expression; she managed it in the time and with the same degree of effort that one might turn a page. It got easier, every time, to lie, _especially_ to him, on whom she had done so much of her practising.

"I was just remembering that night," she said, unable to suppress another flash of guilt quite as easily as she could suppress the manifestation of it in her face, "It's still — I mean, I guess it still bothers me, sometimes."

Severus frowned, deeply; she could feel his eyes examining her, reading her face as if it _were_ a freshly turned page. He made a small noise in his throat, and then:

"I suppose I'd better be going; don't forget my warnings, Calista, and don't —"

He stopped, and exhaled.

"Don't what?" she prompted, afraid of what he might say, what he might ask her to promise. If he _did_ … keeping the truth was one thing; lying outright if he asked her a direct question was something else altogether.

 _Don't write back to the werewolf,_ he might say, _Don't write back to Sirius Black._ Or, perhaps, _Don't keep so many secrets._

Breaking a promise, if he did ask her to make one; that was yet another animal. In fact, any vow he asked her to make, after everything they'd been through, might as well be an Unbreakable one. She braced herself, knowing she'd have to agree, if he _did_ direct her to any of those three things.

Instead, however, he simply shook his head.

"Good-bye, Calista; I'll see you at the weekend, if I can. Stay safe."

"You, too."

Severus nodded, and stepped towards the fireplace. He took a pinch of Floo powder from the jar atop the mantle, and tossed it on the flames, turning them briefly green.

At the last possible second, Calista reached out, snagging his black-clad elbow once more.

"Dad," she said, quickly, before he could step fully through the flames, "I'm sorry for — for —"

 _Being a snarly bitch_ , she thought, remembering Amelia's accusation, _Fighting with you, fighting with Uncle Lucius; keeping things from you._

"I know," Severus said, quietly, and; "I love you, Calista."

The flames crackled expectantly; there were only a few seconds before they'd die back down and the Floo powder would be wasted.

"I love you too, Dad," she said, but he had already stepped through the fire.

He was already gone.


	7. Owls

**7: Owls**

The first week of September, Calista received two long-awaited owls: the starting date for her work with the Charms Committee, and the small stack of advance copies of the _Experimental Charms Journal_ that contained her article.

She would have liked to slip into her father's study, to sit in the armchair across from his customary one, and to have him read it over with a critical eye; though she had discussed most of its contents with him at length during the course of years she'd been working in her research, he had never actually read the article in full, in the version that had been published.

Her father, however, was at Hogwarts, and she knew the first couple of weeks were always among his busiest, and so she had to content herself with a different, solitary armchair, in a solitary room in a solitary house in the middle of what was a rather solitary neighbourhood. The little house at Spinner's End had always felt quiet, but it had never felt quite so empty, to Calista.

She attached a copy of the journal to Lucerne's leg, and then she realised that she had never actually had to address an owl to her father before. Lucerne would be able to find him no matter _how_ she addressed the parcel, of course, but still…

 _Professor Severus Snape,_ she wrote, _Potions Master_.

Probably just adding 'Hogwarts' would have been enough… but Calista was struck by a sudden spark of mischief, and a snippet of memory, and her fingers moved practically of their own accord, scrawling the rest of the address enthusiastically:

 _The darkest corner of the darkest room in the darkest part of the dungeon,_

 _Probably hunched menacingly over a cauldron full of deadly poison,_

 _And definitely not smiling (It hardly suits his persona),_

 _Hogwarts._

Calista smirked, and ruffled Lucerne's feathers.

"There," she said, "I reckon you ought to be able to find him now."

She felt the hum of self-satisfied amusement all along her limbs, as she watched Lucerne wing her way through the kitchen window and towards the horizon, and she felt it still as she imagined that if she waited, to curl up in the solitary armchair at Spinner's End, she might very well be able to review the article at the same time he did.

It was a nice, rare moment, feeling light; feeling _happy_. And then, when Lucerne's shape in the sky disappeared and she turned away from the window, she realised that nothing had really changed: it was still dark, and quiet, and she was still alone.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista had a choice, she realised, as she carefully counted out and lined up thirteen Sopophorous Beans on her work surface. She scanned the row of tools behind her cauldron, and scowled. Someone had moved them again; someone was _always_ moving them, despite the fact that they each had their own set of brand-new tools, provided by Uncle Lucius' 'donation'.

She considered her options, as she looked for the distinctive hilt of the silver dagger that belonged with her potions tools. Staying at the house alone for another night was no longer one of them; she couldn't stand the dead quiet, emptiness for another long night. Couldn't stand waking, again, to the fear of a nightmare and nothing to escape it _into_ ; no conversation, no warm hands at her shoulders, not even the low, even breathing that meant another soul was nearby.

She frowned deeply, craning her neck to look behind the cauldron; the spot in the rack where the dagger lived was conspicuously bare. She shuffled through the rack, knowing her potion wouldn't be stable much longer without the next ingredient, knowing the dagger wasn't here, and also knowing that saying so would start the next scene in a series of them that she had no patience left for.

She could invite Gerald over to stay; he'd offered again, and she'd _wanted_ to say yes, but… ever since Mrs. Yaxley's inexplicable appearance in her father's _bedroom_ , she couldn't stop thinking of the night, back when she was twelve years old, when she'd stayed at Emily Yaxley's house and woken the whole house up with the screams from her nightmares.

Gerald said he understood nightmares, but he couldn't possibly understand them like _she_ had them, and she didn't care to enlighten him. She'd seen herself, in her own memories and in her father's, in that hated Pensieve, wild and terrified and sometimes, beyond the realm of reason; what if that happened again, in front of _him_? What if it made him see her differently? What if in his eyes, she became, 'psycho', as Olivia had often accused, or broken, or — perhaps worst of all — _pitiable_?

If she were being perfectly honest, it was one of the reasons she had delayed asking for the time to travel to France with him.

She frowned, and huffed, and shifted her tools around in the rack, lifting items that couldn't possibly hide anything under or behind them just to delay the inevitable.

She could stay with Amelia for a day or two, but it was sure to be uncomfortable even if she _didn't_ have a nightmare; Amelia's parents already thought she was odd, and anyway, Amelia was over at Endria's more often than not these days.

She knew her father would prefer that she stay with Lucius and Narcissa, and even though in some ways that was her most comfortable and familiar option — _they'd_ already witnessed her nightmares after all, and hadn't treated her any differently; Aunt Narcissa, in particular, was a particularly good confidante, and she was deft at coercing Calista into accepting affection that her prickly instinct advised her to shy away from — Calista hadn't yet forgiven Uncle Lucius for his meddling, and just imagining sitting across the vast dinner table from him made her blood start to simmer —

Her frown twisted into a scowl, as she began to toss the items on her rack about more frantically; not only was the dagger undeniably gone, but she was missing a few other things too, copper tweezers and her favourite measuring spoon. She grit her teeth, and took a breath. The potion would only be stable another four or five minutes, at best, if she didn't add the Sopophorous Beans.

"Whoever's taken my tools this time, you'd better return them, or someone is having their procedure done while they're wide awake."

Though uncommon, sometimes a witch or wizard arrived at the hospital in such grievous condition that it was deemed cruel to allow them to be awake during the course of their treatment; it occurred most often in dueling accidents, or creature attacks, and in such cases, the patient was given careful doses of the Draught of Living Death while the healers did their work.

She had a feeling she knew who the patient _was_ , too; Amelia had told her, earlier in the week, about a woman that had shown up missing a hand and covered in mysterious welts and marks. She didn't seem to speak English or any other language that made sense to anyone, and no one knew where she'd come from or how she'd been injured, since she wasn't saying, at least not so anyone could understand.

The hand, that was diagnosable: Amelia had shivered as she'd confirmed to Calista what nearly every witch or wizard's greatest fear was:

' _Splinched,'_ _Amelia had said, heavily, 'Took out her wand hand — they think her wand is still in it, wherever the poor bird left it. Found without it, nearly died of blood loss. At least the healers think whatever set on her wasn't poisonous, there's no sign of that in the wounds.'_

Astra strode over, nose lifted high in the air; it wasn't quite clear precisely how much authority she still held over Calista, but stretching that line as thin and as far as it would go had quickly become her favourite pursuit.

"You've been assigned the Draught of Living Death today, Callie," Astra said, managing somehow to peer down her nose at Calista, who was considerably taller, "Are you saying that you're _unable_ to complete your work assignment?" she smirked, "Do we need to pass it on to someone who _can_ brew it, then?"

Calista's jaw worked. "I can make the potion," she said, as evenly as she could manage, "Just as soon as my tools are returned to me."

"Returned?" Astra quirked a brow, and spread her hand out, appealing to whoever else was in earshot; that included Griselle, Hector, and _of course_ , Kyle Macmillan; he always seemed to appear whenever an opportunity to humiliate Calista presented itself. "Have you misplaced your tools _again_ , Callie? I suppose we'll need to file a report, if they're lost — new rules, I'm certain you remember. We must inform hospital management about any… _inventory loss_."

Her smile was thin and poisonous; Calista felt the heat of anger, already sparked by thinking of her uncle, beginning its deep, heavy pulse at her collarbone, under her fingertips, against the surface of every bone in her body.

"I haven't _misplaced_ anything," she hissed, and there was such venom in her tone that it easily overpowered Astra's; she saw Griselle look hastily away, and Kyle suddenly found something to do at his own workstation. "You all know that full well."

"If you can't make the potion, it will need to be reassigned," Astra said coldly, "I can assign you something _easier_ , Callie; perhaps I'll send you across the hall with the apprentices."

"I make a Draught of Living Death better than anyone else in this entire hospital," Calista said, venom underlaced with a certain, inherited matter-of-fact arrogance, "And _you_ might we willing to sacrifice the quality of a patient's care for your personal games, but I'm not —"

She heard a sharp hiss from somewhere; she didn't know where, and she no longer cared. Perhaps it had even come from her; certainly, rage was rising off her now, half-righteous and half-wild, despite her careful control over it. She _did_ care about the patient, the mysterious splinched-woman, but oh gods, how fiercely she also cared, in that moment, about _herself_ , and about putting an end to even one ring in the dark, destructive cycle that was ruling her days, of late...

"I don't think Madame Hipworth would make that sacrifice either," Calista went on, no longer caring that Astra, too, wa snow trembling with rage, or that her pretty blue eyes had narrowed to snake-like slits, "But let's _ask_ her, shall we — as I'll have nothing _else_ to do once your idiotic _theft_ has ruined this potion —"

Astra's mouth opened, but there was a flurry of hurried motion, and a blur of brown robes, and then suddenly, _Kyle Macmillan_ , of all people, who demonstrably hated _both_ Astra and Calista, had positioned himself between them, and he was holding out an object that sent a flash of deep, thudding panic through Calista's chest, binding it up —

She took a deep breath, forcing her heart to still, as Kyle shifted his grip on the object, turning it carefully hilt-out.

"Here," Kyle said, quietly, "We need to deliver the potion upstairs; you do make it the best. Use my dagger, for now."

She made herself breathe; she made herself taste the air on her tongue and in the back of her throat; she made herself look over at her bubbling cauldron, the milky lilac colour on the verge of turning dark, and useless, and then she made herself reach out, and pluck the handle of the dagger carefully from Kyle's proffered hand.

It was as if he'd pierced the tension, in turning the blade out, and in offering it to her; Astra stormed away, and Griselle and Hector leaned back over their own cauldrons, suddenly hastily busy.

It took an effort, and a willpower, that Calista knew she wouldn't have had, if she hadn't trained in Occlumency for most of her life, but she was able to steady her hands, and then, as she pressed the flat of the blade deftly against the line of Sopophorous Beans:

"Thank you, Kyle."

"Sure," Kyle said, and then, with a flicked glance over her shoulder and over her workstation to the other two, where Hector and Griselle were both making a valiant effort to look absorbed in their work, and not at all like they'd just been watching the drama unfold as eagerly as if it had been a stage play, he added: "They do need the potion. Upstairs. Like you said, patient care…"

He leaned over her cauldron and withdrew a tall wooden spoon, the one she _always_ used, despite its well-worn and stained surface, the one her father had given to her during one of their first lessons, well over a decade ago, the one that decidedly did not fit with the rest of the shiny, pristine tools in her rack and which was perhaps the _only_ item that hadn't yet been stolen at least once.

Kyle smiled crookedly, holding it out; wordlessly, Calista set the blade down and reached to take it from him, and he held onto it a second too long, so that each of them gripped either end of the spoon, for an instant.

"I'm sorry your tools went missing," he said, quietly, and then he let go of the spoon; Calista's arm jerked back at the sudden release, and she lowered it hastily to her cauldron to cover it up.

"I'm sure you are," she muttered out the side of her mouth, carefully counting out seven counterclockwise stirs; she shifted, and stirred the cauldron just once in the opposite direction.

"I am," Kyle said, easily, "And I'll prove it."

The potion shimmered, and in an instant, became entirely clear and even. She knew at once that it was perfect.

"I'm going to help you look for them," Kyle said, lifting a clear flask from her rack now, and handing it over, "I'll even stay late if I have to. Would that be proof enough that I'm sorry, _Callie_?"

She didn't quite know how to interpret the look he gave her then, so it was good that she had the potion to concentrate on; she ladled it carefully into the proffered flask, not spilling a drop, and then she corked it firmly.

"I can look for them myself," she said, finally, stiffly.

"Oh, aye, you can look," Kyle said, and his mouth stretched into a slick, sardonic sort of grin. "But without my help, I reckon you won't _find_ them."

Calista narrowed her eyes; she opened her mouth, feeling the prick of rage in her chest again; _he_ had hidden them, _that_ was what his bloody, self-satisfied look was about —

"Here," Kyle said again, and this time it was an empty hand he held out, "Hand me that flask; I'll deliver it upstairs for you, just to prove I mean well."

Calista snatched the flask close to her body, and lifted her chin.

"No," she said, forcefully, "You've done _quite_ enough. I'll deliver it myself."

She cradled the flask then, and turned on her heel. She made herself lift her chin, and she didn't look back, until she reached the door. Then, she did turn her head slightly, to look over her shoulder, to where Astra had retreated, watching them both with evident disdain.

"Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you, Astra," Calista said, quite loudly, "I'm not going to be here on Monday or Tuesday, next week; I'm taking some time off to go to France."

"Oh, _are_ you?" Astra started, "We'll see about —"

"Yes," Calista said, even louder, and with even more matter-of-fact arrogance, "I _am._ I expect you'll find coverage."

She expected to feel even worse, after that, as she traced her way along the corridor that led to the portrait; but she found that she _didn't_ , not even after Gaspard Shingleton's image stirred awake and lobbed a series of half-hearted insults at her back.

Instead, she felt something very curious, something she wasn't particularly accustomed to; something that had made her shiver in fear the first time she'd felt it, and had even brought unpleasant memories washing over her like a tide: _power._

This time, she found that it wasn't quite so unwelcome, at all; in fact, she sensed that if she let it, it would settle along her bones, a cool and silky counterpart to the burning, uneven rage even now was slipping away, puddling behind her.

Inexplicably, she heard the remembered voice of the Sorting Hat in her ear, small and factual:

 _In Ravenclaw, you might have been happy_. _In Slytherin, you will be great._

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista had found the answer to her empty-house dilemma in an unexpected invitation; until Saturday morning, when it looked like she really _would_ be going to Marseille with Gerald, it looked like she would have company at Spinner's End, after all.

Andromeda had called her on the fire on Wednesday evening, just as Calista had resigned to staying in the empty house by herself _again_ ; and it might have been her newfound steely calm in the face of Astra's wrath, or it might have been sheer desperation _not_ to be alone, in the middle of a chill, clouded night, but Calista had instantly accepted Andromeda's invitation to come for dinner, despite the argument they'd had last time she'd gone there. And then, peering past her niece into the dim sitting room, Andromeda had frowned, face quite literally ashen.

"Calista, you're not staying in that dusty old place by _yourself_ , are you?"

Andromeda had never been over their house, but Tonks had. Calista frowned. It wasn't _dusty_ , at least not anymore. She did a round of Scouring Charms twice a week, ensuring just that.

"Yes, I'm here alone." Of course she was; Severus was back at school; he was a Professor, after all. What did her aunt expect?

Andromeda's tutting had loosed a few ashes, scattering them at Calista's feet.

"Nymphadora said you'd be having friends stay with you," she mused, "Or that boyfriend of yours — how did he like the tickets, by the way, that Ted picked up?"

"He's very excited," Calista said; somehow, the question made her feel more at ease. Perhaps Andromeda had forgotten the fight Calista had picked the last time she'd been there; or perhaps, like Calista, she really just wanted to move past it. "The play doesn't open until October, but he's pleased with the seats."

She paused, tilting her head. He had been _very_ pleased, in fact, and…

"He's _really_ excited to see this Maggie Smith, whoever she is," Calista reported, reluctantly and a bit suspiciously. "In the play."

"Ah, yes; from what Ted tells me, she's sure to be the highlight of it."

Calista felt a slight pull of unease. She took a bracing breath.

"She's... she must be _quite_ pretty then, I expect?"

Andromeda withdrew briefly, speaking over her shoulder; when she came back, there was another flurry of ashes; and then, Ted's face appeared beside his wife's in the fireplace, wheezing on a breeze of barely contained laughter. Well, that explained the ashes.

" _Quite pretty_ , eh?" Ted said, "That's what you're worrying about, in that deserted dark house of yours?"

Calista frowned. "I wouldn't precisely say I was worrying," she muttered, but Ted was grinning at her, now.

"Dame Maggie Smith," Ted declared, "Is a _phenomenal_ actress, no doubt about that; but as for looks, she's the spitting of Professor McGonagall, and every bit as old."

Calista blinked. She felt the beginning of a blush, creeping into her cheeks.

"Oh."

"Yes," Ted agreed, " _Oh._ Now, Apparate yourself over here for dinner, we've made plenty — and we're sending you home with a heaping plate of leftovers _and_ your cousin, Dora."

"That's really not nec—" Calista started to say, but Andromeda interrupted her.

"Nymphadora's thrilled to be rid of _us_ for a few days, I assure, you. She's packing her things already."

"Well…" Calista felt her spirits lifting a bit further. "I suppose it _would_ be nice to have the company."

"That's settled then," her aunt said, and then, in a particular, firm tone she shared with Narcissa and that Calista was loathe to argue with, "Now, hurry over. Dinner's getting cold."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

A pleasantly full stomach, as it happened, was precisely what Calista needed to shed the rest of her melancholy mood, at least for the moment. She found herself lingering at the table afterwards with the rest of them, laughing at Tonks' Auror stories and Ted's corny jokes, and she was very glad that she'd decided to accept both the dinner invitation, and the promise of her cousin's company over the next few days.

And then, after the dishes were cleared, and Calista was helping her aunt wash them and put them away in the kitchen, the topic of conversation inevitably turned.

"So," Andromeda said, quietly, sending a jet of soapy water at a plate, and then passing it to Calista, who dried it with a complementary jet of warm air, "Did you open Sirius' letter?"

Calista started slightly, and glanced around the kitchen, under pretense of putting the now-dry plate away in an overhead cupboard.

Ted and Tonks _knew_ about Sirius' letter, of course; but she hadn't discussed it with anyone except Gerald, and she wasn't quite certain whether she was ready to. The kitchen was empty, but for the two of them; Andromeda's expression was perfectly neutral, but her eyes were on her niece.

"I did," Calista said, cautiously; would Andromeda ask her what had been in it? She didn't think she wanted to mention the question she hadn't asked, but that Sirius had somehow known she'd needed the answer to. She didn't think she wanted to verbalise her fear, of Bellatrix escaping; that might somehow make it feel more like a real possibility, and then she'd never manage to sleep soundly.

Andromeda merely nodded, though, and their peaceable cleaning rhythm continued. It was only when the last plate had been put away, and Andromeda was drying her hands and her wand tip on a dish towel, that she met Calista's gaze again.

"If you decide to write back to him," her aunt said, "Give your letter to me, and I'll make certain it gets where it needs to."

Calista felt an irrational surge of anger; _or was it fear_? It was all too easy to imagine herself penning a response, sealing it up, writing his name on the front of the envelope; but she couldn't possibly do that, could she? Reading his letter was one thing; writing back, willingly, when she couldn't even use the excuse of the question he'd already answered — surely, that would amount to a betrayal of her father. Wouldn't it? Wasn't it a sort of betrayal already that she _wanted_ to write back, despite knowing what he'd almost done to her father, all those years ago?

Andromeda was still watching her for a response; Calista scowled.

" _If_ I decide to write back to him," she said, injecting a deliberately dubious tone into her voice, "I suppose I can manage it myself, without your help."

She expected her aunt to wince, or to scowl back at her; or perhaps, even, to look hurt or taken aback, as she had the last time that Calista had lashed out. But instead, Aunt Andromeda _smirked_.

"You're welcome to try," her aunt said, "But I very much doubt you'd have any luck."

Calista felt her scowl deepen. "What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

Andromeda's smirk shifted, into a soft, secretive sort of smile.

"Do you really imagine, Calista," she posed, "That a man who is a fugitive from the law, whose face has been plastered in the Daily Prophet of late more often than Celestina Warbeck's, has been careless enough to let himself be found by any old owl? And if he _had_ been so careless, do you really imagine that the Ministry wouldn't have sent a tracked owl to him already, and dragged him right back to Azkaban months ago?"

Calista blinked; suddenly, what her aunt said struck her as blindingly obvious; Merlin, she must have seemed like an _idiot_. No wonder Andromeda was smirking.

"Fine," she muttered, simultaneously irritated and relieved; she couldn't write him, then, which meant… well, it meant she _couldn't_ write him, and she wouldn't need to weigh her guilt against her inexplicable urge to do so. "He's Untraceable, obviously. So I won't be writing him back."

"Sirius is Untraceable," her aunt confirmed, still with the hint of a knowing smile, "To letters from all but three very specific origins; he can be reached, but _only_ if the letter is posted by one of the three of us the Obfuscation spells don't apply to; so unless you're planning on suddenly becoming quite cosy with one of Sirius' old school friends, or with his godson, Harry Potter himself, then I suppose you'll have to settle for going through _me_ , after all."

Her aunt's expression flickered, with a brief, sharp stab of amusement. "That is, of course," her aunt added, mimicking Calista's earlier tone precisely, " _If_ you decide to write back to him."

Calista felt a prickle of embarrassment, followed by a reluctant softening towards her aunt.

"Fine," she said again, peevishly, "I probably deserved that."

"You did," her aunt agreed, and then her smile softened, and she shifted carefully, slowly, closer to Calista; with ample warning, she lifted her arms and pulled her niece into a quick, soft hug; Calista was so surprised, despite the warning, that she allowed it to happen.

"Of course, you also deserve _this_ ," her aunt said, with surprising fondness, and then, a bit reluctantly, she let go. Calista took an automatic step away, and then immediately wished that she hadn't. She saw the corners of Andromeda's mouth drop, slightly.

"I'm sorry," Calista said, not quite certain precisely what she was apologising for. "I just — I…"

Her aunt nodded, brusquely. "Of course. I understand," she said, though Calista had the impression that Andromeda might not have any better of an idea of what Calista was apologising for than she did herself.

"So," Calista said, after a moment, "I suppose it was something of a risk, for Sirius to write to _me_ , even through you. I mean, I might have told my father, or someone at work, or…"

She trailed off, wondering if she had gone mad; there was no other reason to bring her father up now, in this context. She told herself she was asking only to break the silence.

To Calista's surprise, Andromeda's secretive smile returned.

"Oh, it wasn't very much of a risk," her aunt said, "I didn't really think you _would_ betray him, firstly…"

Calista felt a flash of guilt; there was that word, only her aunt had applied it to the wrong party. She was suddenly irrationally nervous, a sif Severus might very well be eavesdropping on their conversation. She could imagine his eyes flashing dangerously; it was a bit _too_ easy to see, just now.

"And secondly," Andromeda went on, "You couldn't have, even if you'd wanted to; or at least, you might have told someone what Sirius had written you, but you wouldn't be able to _prove_ it to them." Andromeda flicked a brief grin.

"In fact," she said, "I imagine, if you had tried to show someone Sirius' letter, they would have seen only a _blank, mouldy old sheet of parchment_."

Something sparked, the flash of a memory in Calista's mind; she was suddenly aware of a particular, telltale weight in the pocket of her robes, one she was so accustomed to that she normally didn't even notice anymore. Of _course_ …

"Merlin's blood," Calista said, genuinely impressed, and a bit surprised that she hadn't thought of it already, "You put the enchantment on it, didn't you? The same one that you put on your journal."

That meant that the letter's contents would only become visible if Andromeda handed the letter over to them personally; if Calista had attempted to show it to her father, or if her father had found it among her things, it would have appeared utterly innocuous, and utterly _blank_.

Andromeda's grin widened, and she nodded. " _Your_ journal, these days," she confirmed. Calista felt a bloom of warmth flowering somewhere in her gut; it reminded her, like possibly nothing else would have, how really _alike_ she and her Aunt Andromeda could be, and perhaps more importantly, how well Aunt Andromeda saw that herself.

"Well, then, I suppose it _was_ a bit risky," Calista said, and it was her turn to smirk, "After all, how could you know that the enchantment wouldn't transfer itself to _me_ again? Perhaps I could have become the only one to make its contents visible, by passing it on."

"You know," Andromeda said thoughtfully, "I really hadn't thought of that; I still don't quite know why the journal's enchantment shifted, but I'm extraordinarily glad that it did."

"Me, too," Calista said quietly; that little journal, which had once been her only escape and really, her only friend, had quite literally saved her life, more than once. Just like her father had; and just like Sirius had. Surely, that had to ease the sting of potential betrayal. It would, wouldn't it?

"I might write back," Calista heard herself say, quietly and unexpectedly, "I just… I need to think about what to say, first."

Andromeda nodded, and then Calista surprised herself, again: she took a slow, careful step towards her aunt, and then, with ample warning, she raised her arms and pulled her into a hug that wasn't quite as soft, or as brief, as its predecessor had been.

Andromeda squeezed her back, and softly, just above Calista's head: "I'm glad you accepted my invitation, Calista."

She knew, somehow, that her aunt didn't just mean tonight; she meant a lot more than that. She meant something that harkened back to the way she'd signed one of the first letters she had ever sent to her niece: _Your Aunt (if you'll have me)_.

"Me, too," Calista said, again. "I'm glad I came."

Tonks came bursting into the kitchen, just then; if she noticed her mother and her cousin gently disentangling themselves from a familial embrace, she didn't seem to find it noteworthy; she simply lifted the bag in her arms, half-zippered and overflowing with clothes and something that looked suspiciously like the neck of a bottle of firewhiskey.

"All packed!" she said, brightly, "Just let me know when you're ready to go, Calista."

Calista nodded. "We should probably go back to my house soon," she said, "So you can get settled in; I mean, since we both have to work tomorrow."

"Yeah, reckon so," Tonks agreed, and then she grinned. "Speaking of packing — are you ready for your trip? I can't believe you've never left the country before now."

Calista blinked. "Well, where would I have _gone_? It's not like I know anyone that isn't from Hogwarts."

"I dunno, Ireland at least, I was th — oh! Blimey, Calista, speaking of knowing people from Hogwarts — why didn't you ever tell me that you work with Kyle Macmillan?"

Instantly, Calista's scowl returned, as Kyle's face swam into her mind's eye; she didn't know which version of it she hated more, the hostile one, or the one that had worn the odd, semi-repentant expression earlier that very day.

"Huh? You know him?" she settled for asking, intelligently.

"Duh, of course I _know_ him," Tonks said, "He was in my House, wasn't he? Two years ahead of me — same year as Charlie's older brother Bill — they were pretty good friends. S'why I always thought Kyle would've gone into curse-breaking too, I had no idea he was working at St. Mungo's until I ran into him there a few days ago."

"Oh," Calista managed, "Well — we ah, don't exactly get along."

Tonks grinned. "Yeah, Kyle mentioned that. Well, actually, he was complaining about Snape's spoiled, know-it-all rich girl daughter who seemed poised to replace Astra Shingleton as the single biggest pain in his arse — I already knew from you what was going on in the department, so naturally I let him dig himself into a bit of a hole for my own amusement before I told him you were my cousin."

"Ah. I suppose _that_ explains why he suddenly decided to be slightly less of an arsehole to me today, of all days."

"Heh, yeah, reckon it might," Tonks agreed, "Anyway, I told him you were pretty great actually, despite Dear Old Uncle Lucy always throwing money at you — sorry, but it's true, he does — and he was suddenly in a hurry to clarify that he hadn't really _meant_ everything he said, he was just taking the piss, blah blah blah."

Calista felt her scowl return. "What kinds of things did he _say_?"

Tonks slung her bag over her shoulder, and waved her hand dismissively. "Nothing that awful, really. It was mostly about the money, and how burned up he was that it was always someone's relative's money that made all the decisions — he did say he liked the new cauldrons, though."

"He did?"

"Yep. Right after he said he ought to be in charge of the department since he's the only reasonable one, only he hasn't got the _eyelashes_ for it. It was really pretty funny — he did admit that you, at least, didn't muck up potions like Astra."

"Well, _obviously_. Astra's an idiot, and my father's the best Potions brewer in the country."

"See, I think that might've been part of why he doesn't — er, didn't — like you," Tonks said, "He really didn't like Sn — er, you dad — in school."

"What else is new?" Calista snarked; as far as she could tell, _no one_ but the Slytherins and a handful of Gerald's Ravenclaw friends had.

"Well, actually, this bottle of firewhiskey is," Tonks grinned, gesturing to the bottle sticking out of her bag, "Fancy a glass before bed?"

Calista shuddered; she could have sworn she could _feel_ cinnamon-flavoured bile crawling up the back of her throat. "Definitely not."

Tonks shrugged cheerfully. "More for me — " she caught her mother's look and then, contritely: "A very _small_ glass, of course. Don't worry, Mum, I'll be perfectly alert and capable on the job tomorrow."

"I would certainly expect so," Andromeda said, in her firm tone once again; the one that Calista almost wanted to tell her sounded _precisely_ like Narcissa's. "After all, Nymphadora, your duties are —"

"Eugh, Mum, stop calling me that," Tonks groaned, "I'll behave. And anyway, Auror or not, at this point, my job is mostly just checking that no one's trying to slip Fanged Geraniums into the someone's flowers. Figured I'd get something more exciting once Moody went off to Hogwarts, but n—"

" _What_?" Calista interrupted, quite a bit louder than she'd intended, "Moody's at _Hogwarts?_ "

"You hadn't heard? Yeah, he's taking up the Defence post this year — those poor students have got no idea what they're in for. He's great, but he really is a bit mad."

Calista felt her heartbeat start to race; the bile rose up in her throat again, albeit without the cinnamon, this time. The things she'd heard about Moody, and about his methods… what if he decided that her father was a target, because of the Mark on his forearm? What if her father ended up under suspicion, under attack, hurt, or even _worse_ …

"Calista? You all right?"

Calista swallowed. This was once concern that she knew she would never be able to share with _anyone_. Instead, she took a breath, and drew up her walls around her fear, and shoved it far, far down, in a place she knew she'd examine later, whether she wanted to or not.

"Yeah," she lied, "I'm fine. Let's go. It's getting dark."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista felt the familiar pull in her stomach that came with side-along Apparition, but when she landed, that almost-nausea and the feel of Gerald's hand in hers were the _only_ things that were familiar.

"Merlin's blood," Calista said, once she and Gerald had stepped out from behind a conveniently placed bush that served as the Apparition point to wherever he'd brought them, "This place is _enormous —_ what is — aargh!"

She started, and leapt back behind the bush as a sudden, horrifically loud roaring noise began overhead; it was like a train, hurtling over them; but that wasn't possible, was it? Even the Hogwarts Express didn't _fly_.

She looked up; something like a massive metal bird was passing them overhead… the noise receded just as the silhouette did.

"What the hell was _that_?" she managed, clutching at her chest.

"It's an airplane," Gerald said; he frowned, caught somewhere between surprise and concern. "You can't seriously be telling me you've never even heard of an _airplane_ before?"

"Well, of course I've heard of them!" Calista snapped, "But the ones _I've_ seen were about this big —" she pinched her fingers about an inch apart in demonstration, and the gesticulated wildly towards the sky overhead, "And all the way up _there_!"

Gerald blinked, several times. He seemed to be trying very hard to keep his expression neutral, but Calista caught a glimpse of mingled amusement and exasperation, both of which irked her.

"Erm," he said, "They do look very small, yes, when they're at altitude. But this is the airport, where they all take off and land from, so you're a lot closer to them here."

It was Calista's turn to blink, now.

" _Land_?" she gaped, "The airplanes come down to the _ground_?"

Gerald's eyebrows went nearly to his hairline; she thought sourly that he looked as if she'd just told him she didn't know how to read.

"Well, of course they do. How on earth did you think people got on and off them?" he wondered.

"With those umbrella things," Calista said defensively, "Pear-shoots, or whatever they're called. Isn't that what they're _for_? Jumping out of airplanes?"

"Erm… I mean, yes, technically…" he shook his head, as if he couldn't even figure out where to start, but he evidently settled on something, because he went on:

"Parachutes," he clarified, "And yes, they _are_ used for that, but not really as an everyday occurrence — it's more of a last resort... _seriously_ , Calista, why didn't you take Muggle Studies?"

It wasn't the first time the question had come up, but on this particular occasion, Calista was just rattled enough and just irritated enough to respond to it honestly:

"You're really asking me that? You've met my family; just how do you think they would have reacted, if I told them I was taking _Muggle Studies_?"

Gerald's concerned frown was back. "I… I suppose I hadn't considered that," he said, "But you know, you've stood up to them in many other circumstances, so perhaps —"

"No," she said, firmly, "It would _not_ have gone well; trust me. You didn't see the letter he sent to me, when he thought you— well, nevermind. He just… he wouldn't have condoned it."

"You were going to say, when he thought I was Muggle-born," Gerald observed. He didn't sound upset, exactly; perhaps forlorn was a better word.

"All right, yes, that _was_ what I was going to say; so whether I would have been interested or not, taking Muggle Studies was never something I considered. It would have been as impossible as announcing my intention to marry a bloody hippogriff."

And then, inexplicably, Gerald grinned, and then he reached for her hand again; her scowl remained, steadfastly, until the moment his lips pressed against her fingers.

"I, for one," Gerald said, around his grin, "Would _dearly_ love to see his reaction to that particular proclamation someday. And now, I'm afraid we really must be going, _mon cœur;_ the last Portkey to Marseille is set to leave in — " he flicked his wrist to check his watch, still not letting go of her hand, "Fifteen minutes. If we miss it, we'll have to go through Avignon and Apparate a fair distance."

She allowed him to lead her out, puzzling over his reaction to her last remark; it was slightly amusing, to be sure, to imagine telling her Uncle Lucius _that_ , but he'd seemed more than just slightly amused; and then, before she'd had a chance to quite work it out for herself, Gerald had led her to a perfectly ordinary looking patch of wall inside the bustling terminal building.

"We've just got to lean against this wall — careful, we don't want to draw attention — and whisper the Portkey we're taking." He turned his head slightly, towards the plain wall. " _Marseille_ , via rubber duck," he murmured, and then, a bit louder: "We should slip through momentarily."

"Rubber duck?" Calista replied, and suddenly, the two of them were on the other side of the wall: a harried-looking wizard in official-looking robes was directing clusters of travelers towards a line of pedestals containing myriad innocuous-looking objects. When the agent got to them and Gerald told them where they were going, he pointed them towards a pedestal that held a small, single toy duck that would have easily fit in the palm of her hand.

"Oh!" Calista said, when she saw the little duck, " _That's_ a rubber duck! Percy's dad is always going on about them, wondering precisely what they're for — I'll have to tell him they're for Portkeys."

Gerald's bemused grin returned. " _We_ use them for Portkeys, sometimes" he said, "But they've got a different function entirely in the Muggle world. People — children, mostly, I expect — bring them in the bath with them. For fun. Terry used to have one."

"Oh. That sounds… odd. And anti-climactic. But I suppose I still ought to tell Mr. Weasley. I expect he'll be disappointed — he was theorising they might explode."

"You know, Calista…" Gerald's smile pulled down slightly, "I must admit, I'm harbouring a _slight_ concern that this trip may be difficult for you…"

"I don't particularly like Portkeys," Calista reassured him, "But I've taken them before; I'll be fine."

"That's, erm — that's not exactly what I meant," he said; she thought he looked slightly uncomfortable, feet shifting, but the agent came over just then, and directed them, and a handful of others waiting in the same queue, to put a finger to the duck. Calista touched its wing, right next to Gerald's finger.

"Departing for Marseille in five… four… three.." the gate agent counted down; and then, there was a queer pulling and tugging somewhere near Calista's navel, and she was sucked _into_ the duck.

It took her and Gerald both a moment to collect themselves once they had landed, and the duck faded away; they were in another, much smaller hall now, with little wooden crates instead of pedestals. Another agent checked them in, and asked if they needed directions, but Gerald seemed to know where he was going.

"What did you mean, then?" Calista asked, once they had passed through into the Muggle portion of the building they'd arrived in — the airport, he'd said earlier, "Why would this trip be difficult for me?"

"Can you verify that your luggage came through?" Gerald asked, "Just un-Vanish it for a second; I've had it get lost, once, coming through the Portkey."

Calista bent over behind a large signboard map, under pretense of getting a pebble out of her shoe, and briefly muttered the spell that would reveal her luggage; she saw it flicker briefly, and she Vanished it again.

"Yes," she said, straightening, "I've got it. Now, why would this trip be difficult?"

Gerald sighed; she saw the corners of his mouth tug down, but his fingers reached for hers, squeezing her hand reassuringly.

"I'm certain it will all be fine," he said, quietly, as he led her outside, "I'm just _slightly_ nervous because… well, sometimes I forget that there are a lot of things about the world — you know, the Muggle world — that you don't know."

She felt her cheeks start to warm; she mirrored his frown.

"Amelia's parents basically think I'm mental," she admitted, "There was an incident — I tried to cast Incendio on their oven — and anyway, now _I'm_ worried, too."

"I'm certain it will all be fine," Gerald said again, so quickly that now _she_ was certain it wouldn't be. "Just… just try to act like you do around Mum, only don't mention Hogwarts or, uh, _our world_ at all. Mum at least is aware of it, but _Oncle Gérald_ and Sandrine aren't, not at all."

"They don't know you're a wiz —" she started, and then she remembered, just in time, that they were surrounded by Muggles. Her flush deepened.

"No, they don't," Gerald said quietly, once they'd made it outside, and a bit away from the crowd. "They think I went to a special boarding school for, erm —" _he_ was the one who flushed a bit, now, "Gifted children. Don't ask, it was Mum's idea, and then I sort of got stuck with it — but that's where they think I met you, too. And you and I, we _did_ start dating in the library after I left you flowers, but it was in Physics class I gave them to you, instead of Arithmancy — they don't know what the latter is."

"I _do_ know what Physics is," Calista said, slightly relieved, "It's essentially the Muggle version of Arithmancy, isn't it? Professor Vector used to compare them all the time."

Gerald nodded. "It's similar," he agreed, "Only, of course, Muggle physics don't include formulas for Apparition or Vanishing objects, or broom mechanics, or any of that — ah, and they don't calculate the planetary orbits for any purpose other than measuring distance and time."

"Oh," Calista said, "So it's basically the _really easy_ version of Arithmancy, then."

Gerald grinned. "I think so," he agreed, "But don't say so in front of Sandrine; she failed Physics in secondary school, and it's a bit of a sore point."

"All right," Calista said, "We met in Physics class, but don't say Physics is easy — anything else I need to know?"

Gerald nodded. "We're going to Apparate from behind the airport, to a side street near the train station in Marseille. My uncle will meet us there, and we've got to tell him we just came off the train. I _do_ work in runes translation, so it's fine to mention that, but just remember that the Muggles only know a handful of runic alphabets — just don't mention any besides the Futharks and Dalecarlian and you should be relatively safe."

"What about me?" Calista asked, "Muggles don't have Potions; what do I do?"

"Muggles don't have potions, but they do have _medicine_ ," Gerald agreed, "Unfortunately, in the Muggle world, the medicines aren't made in-house like you do at St. Mungo's, they're all purchased from these massive third-party corporations — there's a whole industry, pharmaceuticals, and I've worked out what I think is the closest profession in their world to what you do. I told my uncle you're a pharmaceutical researcher, that you help formulate new medications. I would have had you working as a doctor — a healer — but I was worried they'd ask you biology questions you might not know the Muggle terminology for."

"Erm," Calista said, feeling her stomach tighten with apprehension, "What if they ask me things about that other thing, the farm-suits, that I don't know the terminology for?"

"Pharmaceuticals," Gerald corrected, with remarkable patience, "Or — ah, actually why don't you just say medicine? And that's the beauty of it, by the way — Muggles come up with all sorts of odd and frankly nonsensical names for these compounds. You can just make words up, and no one will know the difference, unless they work in the field — which _Oncle Gérald_ doesn't, thankfully. He's an anthropology professor, and Sandrine's studying Literature at University."

"All right; make words up. Sounds easy enough. Anything else I need to know?"

"Hm." Gerald frowned, considering. "Well, normally, people of our age in our sorts of professions would have gone to University after secondary school, like Sandrine is, but I've gotten past that by telling him that our school — Hagstrow Institute, by the way, it's just an anagram of Hogwarts but that's what Mum told him ages ago and that's what we're stuck with — has a dual-enrollment program, so you and I completed University _while_ we were in secondary school. We both took classes at London South Bank University, mainly because I've been in there enough times using their library to be able to answer any questions they might ask about it."

"All right," Calista said again; her head was spinning and she was beginning to worry that she wouldn't be able to keep track of it all. "Anything _else_?"

"Just one more thing," Gerald said, "And it's the most important point."

Calista frowned apprehensively. "What is it?"

Gerald gestured down a quiet side street, and she followed him down it, away from the crowds of people, tourist and local alike. He squeezed her hand, and led her around the corner, to an even quieter street; here, it was silent and empty, and he ducked into a recessed doorway. This, then, must be the Apparition point.

"The thing is," Gerald said quietly, and once more, he lifted her hand; Calista felt her heart speed up pleasantly, _still_ , after all this time, but this time he didn't immediately press his mouth to her fingers; instead, he brought her hand to the side of his face, and gently unwound their fingers. He pressed her palm flat against his cheek, and looked at her, quite solemnly. "I'm afraid I've told my uncle that we're madly in love. You'll have to sell that convincingly."

"Oh," Calista said; she felt her cheeks light up again. Gods, how did he _still_ have such an effect on her? "I think — erm, I think I can manage that."

Gerald shifted, so that there was practically no space between them; his face was still cupped in her palm, and his fingers reached out now, to mirror the touch on _her_ face, across her lips, over her cheek, and then — _Merlin have mercy_ , along the ridge of her ear.

" _C'est très bien d'entendre, mon beau colibri_."

Calista managed, with considerable effort, to keep her expression neutral, and _not_ to start snogging him in the middle of the admittedly empty alley. If only he'd stop touching her _ear_ like that… but no, she didn't really want him to stop. Damn it, she was one soft French phrase away from a sigh.

"What?" she teased, bravely, "No blasted poetry?" _What was wrong with her?_

"Oh, _mon cœur_ , there's going to be poetry," Gerald said, quite seriously; his fingers shifted to her jaw again, and he tugged it gently towards his; instead of kissing her though, he brought her ear to his mouth, and moved his lips against the shell of her ear, and murmured, very quietly:

" _Je le sauverai pour plus tard_ , _quand nous serons seuls_."

Calista sighed, despite her strong resolution not to; she felt Gerald's mouth at her ear, stretching into what was undoubtedly a triumphant grin. No, this wouldn't do at all. She took a breath, and forced her words out evenly:

" _Non nimium fiduciam_ ," she warned slyly, _Don't be too confident._ " _Ego sum quoque quid enim salvis postea_." _I am also saving something for later._

Evidently, it was his turn now, to make an inadvertent noise; she heard him swallow, audibly, and then he exhaled against her ear.

" _Je… mon colibri, je…"_ he floundered, helplessly; Calista suppressed her _own_ triumphant grin, and used her mouth for something even better; she turned her head, and using her palm that he had pressed against his own jaw, she pulled his mouth to hers, and she kissed him, albeit far more casually and briefly than she really wanted to.

"You see," she said, "There's nothing to worry about; I can make your family believe we are in love; and I can make them believe I make farm suit calls with physics."

Gerald practically choked, then; he blinked, rapidly, and then:

"I'm certain it will all be fine," he said, for the third time.

Somehow, he sounded even less convinced this time than he had before.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

In retrospect, Calista should have realised that she was in over her head about thirty seconds after she met Gerald's uncle — a tall, sandy-haired, soft-spoken man with deliberate, gentle movements — but it took her meeting his cousin a few minutes later — a very pretty girl with caramel-coloured skin, curly brown hair, and a distinctly unimpressed expression — for the pit of dread to really form in her gut.

The problem was that Sandrine was very sharp, and she was _also_ , evidently, incredibly observant for a Muggle who couldn't possibly know the sorts of things Calista knew about reading expression, and tone, and beyond. Equally evident was her fierce affection and protectiveness of her younger cousin, whom she'd greeted promptly with a kiss on the cheek that made Calista scowl. Perhaps that was _really_ where the trouble had started… but no, looking back, it had definitely begun even before that.

" _Gérald, mon garçon_!" It was easy enough to surmise who Gerald's uncle must be, even though they bore little enough resemblance to each other, because he came over to them almost as quickly as they'd exited the train station, and seized both of Gerald's hands in his own, first clasping them, and then pulling his nephew into a brief, soft hug. He said something else then, a string of incredibly rapid French that Calista could only pull a few words from: she gathered that he thought Gerald had grown taller, and she thought he might have asked how the journey went.

She noticed that Gerald glanced at her before he answered his uncle, in English.

"The trip was nice, _Oncle Gérald_ — no turbulence on the flight, and the train was on time. I don't think I'm really any taller, but I _wish_ I was, so I'll accept it." He smiled, slightly, "I'll tell you everything about work a little later on, but for now, I _really_ want to introduce you to Calista."

Uncle Gérald's eyes slid to Calista, then; she caught a brief widening of his eyes — oh gods, Gerald had told him she was coming, hadn't he? — and then, he smiled warmly, and reached to clasp Calista's hands in precisely the same fashion he'd gripped his nephew's. She flinched; she didn't _mean_ to, but it was unexpected, and part of her was afraid he was going to hug her, too, and she didn't _know_ him.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Gerald's uncle said, in accented English, "I have heard very much about you, from _pétit Gérald_."

His gaze shifted then, knowingly, to his nephew, and:

" _Ton colibri?_ "

Gerald's cheeks turned very slightly pink, and he nodded. " _Oui_ ," he agreed, " _Mon colibri, ma bien-aimée_."

Calista felt _her_ cheeks turning pink now, and she shifted, awkwardly, wondering if she was supposed to say something; around her, people hurried to or from the station, speaking in rapid, somersaulting French she didn't have time to try and pick out. Gerald's uncle was eyeing her carefully, now; _was_ she supposed to be saying something? Should she bring up her imaginary job now? More importantly, why had this trip ever seemed like a good idea?

"Hm." His uncle glanced between the two of them, again, and then, " _Je ne suis pas certain si elle est tout à fait comme j'ai attendu._ "

Calista scowled. What was _that_ supposed to mean? She realised a second too late that his eyes were still on her, and he had _definitely_ caught her expression, unless he was blind.

Gerald glanced at her again, slightly puzzled, and then: " _Comment cela?_ "

Uncle Gerald's mouth twitched, slightly, and his gaze slid back towards his nephew. He shook his head, almost imperceptibly. " _Je ne sais pas, encore._ _Peut-ȇtre que je me trompe._ "

" _Vous savez, je peux vous comprendre_ ," Calista snapped, brow coming down, and then his uncle's went _up_ , distinctly impressed.

" _Elle parle le français, Gérald_?"

Gerald opened his mouth, but Calista was quicker: " _Évidemment_ ," she said, a bit sourly.

Immediately, Calista realised her mistake; Gerald's uncle began a string of rapid French, not unlike the one he'd greeted his nephew with, and she could make out even fewer of the words: she felt her face drain of colours as she struggled to replay the sentence in her mind, matching the sounds against words she knew. "I — erm —"

" _Je lui apprends le français_ ," Gerald interjected, and it struck Calista for the first time that Gerald spoke much slower, much more clearly than either his uncle or any of the chattering crowd around them; she began to wonder if it was exclusively for her benefit. " _Elle comprend si tu parle lentement, d'habitude_."

 _She understands if you speak slowly._ Well; that answered her question, at least. It _was_ for her benefit that Gerald's French always seemed much clearer, and much easier to follow, than the phrases that picked and snatched at the air around her, now.

"Ah," Gerald's uncle said, in English once more, "Now I understand. Where are your bags? We should get to the house; Sandrine is eager to see you _Gérald,_ and to meet _ta copine_."

 _Bags_. Shit. Calista realised they hadn't un-Vanished them, and they couldn't very well do it _now_ , in front of a station full of Muggles…

"I left them just inside," Gerald said, quickly, and when his uncle's brow went up quizzically, he added, "With — ah, with a porter. Calista, can you help…?"

"I will help you fetch them," Uncle Gérald said, but Gerald shook his head quickly. "No, I need — ah, I need Calista to point to the right one, it looks the same as others — erm —"

"Yeah," Calista agreed; since she'd been the one to Vanish her luggage, she had to be the one to _un-_ Vanish it. "It blends in."

She scrambled after Gerald, hoping his uncle wouldn't follow them. Fortunately, they were able to slip away, and do what they needed to unseen; but it occurred to her only as they came back outside, wheeling their bags towards an extremely quizzical audience, that she _now_ had to explain how a bag printed with lurid green-and-silver snakes was supposed to 'blend in'. That was what she got, for letting Aunt Narcissa pick out her luggage.

"There were many such bags?" Uncle Gérald asked, not quite unkindly, but understandably skeptical.

"Erm — they're all the rage, now, in London," Gerald offered, a bit half-heartedly. "You should see King's Cross — snakes everywhere."

"Eagles, too," Calista couldn't quite resist adding, slyly, "And badgers and lions."

"Animal luggage," Gerald added, in a rush of near-panic, "Erm — very popular, these days."

"I see," Uncle Gérald said, in a tone that managed to convey, quite clearly, that he didn't. "Ahem — shall we depart, then?"

"This is awful," Calista whispered, when Gerald's uncle had gone far enough ahead of them that she knew she couldn't be overheard, "He hates me already."

"No, he doesn't," Gerald murmured back, reassuringly, "Just — erm — be a little more careful around Sandrine, that's all. She's hard to lie to."

"Should I have mentioned the farm suit calls?" she worried, "Wasn't he asking me something about work?"

"No. Just… just say 'medicine', if it comes up, okay?"

"Oh, right, you said that. Merlin's beard, Gerald, I can't do this —"

"Of course you can, _mon cœur_. Just — ah, don't say anything about Merlin, either. They… they've heard of him, but not as a real person, and not as someone adults normally bring up in conversation."

" _Merl —_ I mean, erm, _merpeople_? Can I say that, if I slip up?"

Gerald shook his head, apprehensively. "They don't know about them, either. Just… ah, just…"

"I can't do this."

Gerald squeezed her hand reassuringly, but he couldn't quite hide his concerned frown.

"I'm certain it will all be fine."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

It took Sandrine about as long as it had taken Uncle Gérald to decide that Calista wasn't quite what she'd expected. First, there had been the unfortunately timed scowl, when Sandrine kissed Gerald's cheek, that Sandrine had most definitely caught, and it had only gotten worse from there.

Gerald's cover story of dual-enrollment in secondary school and University evidently wasn't as believable as he thought, at least not for the profession he'd given her; Sandrine's brow had shot up, when Gerald explained it.

"I'm sorry, Calista," Sandrine had said, eyeing her directly at a moment when Gerald and his uncle were discussing something else, "I thought Gerald had said that you were already working in formulation — I see now that I must have misunderstood, he must have meant that you're studying in a University laboratory, towards _une maîtrise_."

"Erm." Calista blinked. She glanced towards Gerald, but he was saying something now in rapid French — damn it, he really _did_ slow it down a great deal, for her — so she realised she was going to have to do her best to follow the advice he'd given her earlier.

"No, I… I do work in formulation," she said; that was what Gerald had told her, after all. "I brew — erm, that is, I help to create new farm — new medicines. We use… ah, we use the principles of physics and… and —" Sandrine was looking at her as if she were mad, but hadn't Gerald said she could make up words and no one would know the difference? She tried that, now, hoping it would provide a smooth recovery:

"Murklesnapple," she said, confidently; she willed her expression to sell it, tried to pretend that she knew exactly what she was saying, "We mainly base our formulas in murklesnapple."

"Murkle — what in the _hell_ is 'murklesnapple'?" Sandrine asked, quite loudly; Gerald startled, and his eyes went wide with alarm, as he took the two of them in at a glance.

"It's — ah, well, it's what we use, in formulations," Calista said, still attempting to feign confidence, "You know, as a… as a base."

"It's proprietary," Gerald said quickly, "She usually can't tell me too much about it. Non-disclosures, and such…"

"I see." Sandrine's brow rose archly. "Still, it is strange. You must be _very_ gifted, indeed — I know Gérald said you were at Hagstrow as well, but he _also_ said you were a year below him, and we have a biomedical program geared towards your line of work at _Aix-Marseille_ , and it's a five-year _maîtrise_ — I don't see how you could _possibly_ complete it simultaneously with your secondary education, unless you were able to time-travel."

"Oh, yes," Calista said, relieved and seizing immediately upon the explanation Sandrine had offered, "That's how I did it — a Time Turner."

 _Oh, Merlin's balls._ That was _definitely_ the wrong thing to say; she saw Gerald's eyes widen in alarm behind his glasses, and he shook his head quickly, trying to hide it from Sandrine, whose jaw was nearly on the table.

"She's — ah, _je suis désolée,_ Sandrine, Calista's prone to sarcasm — it's quite common where she's from, you see, in the Midlands — she wasn't meaning to be rude."

"Oh." Sandrine closed her mouth, and narrowed her eyes slightly; Calista could feel her scrutinising gaze, and she did her best to look somewhere between contrite and amused, as if she _had_ been intending to be flippant, after all, but was just now realising it was inappropriate. She had no idea if it was convincing, or even if it was the _right_ reaction, but Sandrine nodded reluctantly. "I see," she said again; gods, did these people say anything else?

"I'm certain it will all be fine," Calista muttered, under her breath, employing a bit of that Midlands sarcasm.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

It wasn't just in matters of work, and school, and luggage that Calista found herself woefully out of touch with what she was supposed to know and say; her clothes, too, were apparently all wrong. She had brought her very best Muggle clothes, the _crème de la crème_ of the ones Narcissa had purchased for her at one of her posh London shops that specialised in importing Muggle clothing, but according to Sandrine, the blouses, well-cut trousers, and pencil skirts Calista had brought made her look like she was playing at being forty. Certainly, she looked _nothing_ like the people around them, clad in funny, thick blue trousers and T-shirts for rock bands Calista had never heard of; they all looked more like Tonks than like Calista.

She didn't know any of the music she ought to have, either, and she didn't know _any_ of the music that was playing in the shops and clubs, or that Sandrine asked her about.

Gerald covered for her valiantly at every turn, but it was exhausting for her, and so it must have been even worse for _him_. "That's the style at our school," Gerald had explained, and "IAM isn't that well-known in London, yet."

The worst, perhaps, had been at the bookstore; they'd gone with Sandrine to a little shop by the waterfront, and Gerald had taken it upon himself to pick out volumes — some in English, surprisingly, and a few in French for practise — that he thought she ought to read.

"This one's a classic," he'd been saying, adding another to the stack, "I read it all the time when I was small, you'll love it. Oh, and this one —"

" _Excusez-moi_?" Sandrine had interjected, voice rising in disbelief, as she surveyed the stack of titles in Calista's arms, "Do you mean to say that you've never read _any_ of these books before, Calista? Nineteen Eighty-Four? Wuthering Heights? I thought you went to a _gifted_ school?!"

Calista flushed. "I — erm, I — of course I've —"

"Calista almost exclusively reads nonfiction," Gerald supplied, tirelessly, "I've been trying to convince her to branch out, but her tastes are very academic."

"Oh, I see," Sandrine said _again_ , and this time, she sounded personally offended, "And Emily Brontë isn't academic enough for you?"

"I — "Calista was spared having to respond to that by yet another interjection from Sandrine:

" _The Count of Monte Cristo? Seriously?_ Isn't that why we all went to the _Chateau D'If_ this morning? Because you both loved that book so much?"

" _I_ loved it," Gerald said, "I never said Calista had read it; I just wanted her to see the fortress… Sandrine, stop it, please. You're not even giving her a chance to answer you."

"Well, neither are _you_ ," Sandrine had observed, shrewdly. "In fact, _Gérald_ , it seems like you've been afraid all weekend of what she might say; but you've told _Papa_ and I all along how much you both have in common and how wonderful she is to talk to — so why does it seem _now_ like you have nothing in common, and she has nothing to say?"

"Sandrine," Gerald insisted, visibly unhappy, "You're misunderstanding —"

"Maybe I am," Sandrine conceded, with a brief, unimpressed glance to where Calista still clutched her unwieldy stack of books, "Maybe she _is_ everything you've said, in which case you're not being very considerate, cutting her off all the time and answering for her… "

She said this in a tone that heavily implied there was another explanation, and then, she added, in deliberately slow and clear French: " _Ou peut-être tu essayes de t'en convaincre de un fantasme._ "

 _Perhaps you're trying to convince yourself of a fantasy._

Calista felt the stirring of something along her skin; it was jarringly, alarmingly familiar, and she knew suddenly that she had to get out of the bookstore, before she managed to do something that would embarrass her, and Gerald, even further. She set the books down heavily, hardly caring where, and she pushed her way through the narrow aisles of the cluttered, dusty shop as quickly as she could.

" _Tu me racontais ton rêves d'un colibri-fille_ ," she dimly heard Sandrine saying, somewhere behind her, " _Et maintenant, une fille t'aime, mais cela ne veut pas dire qu'elle est la seule fille à avoir._ "

Calista understood enough to know that sandrine was trying to convince Gerald he could have better than her; she quickened her pace, nearly stumbling over a stack of books on the floor, and practically shoving a crowd of chattering students aside.

She'd been certain, when the heat started to flush and creep beside her bones, that it was the burn of rage building to a crescendo in her gut, but once she got outside she found, to her utter dismay and horror, that she was _crying_.

She wanted, _badly_ , to disappear, to Apparate, to go _home_ , and her fingers slipped into her pocket, feeling the reassuring shape of her wand there — but then she remembered all at once that she _couldn't_ Apparate home, not across the ocean, and that even if she went there, the house would be empty and no less lonely than she was feeling. And then, she remembered the tefalon, or whatever it was — she had a scrap of parchment in her pocket with a string of numbers on it — her father had said the person the numbers belonged to could reach him, if she needed him — surely, if she could find a tefalon, she could figure out how to use it and ask him to come take her home…

" _Mon cœur,_ " Gerald was suddenly at her side, mercifully _without_ his blasted cousin, and he wrapped his arms securely around her, murmuring near her ear, " _Je suis désolée, Sandrine est désolée; elle ne voulait pas blesser ton sentiments, elle n'a pas compris. Je lui ai dit que tu étais mon cœur, bien sur tu as toujours été la fille, mon colibri…_ "

"Stop," Calista said, around the tightness in her throat, "Please don't speak any more French; I don't think I can stand it right now. I just want to go home."

" _S'il te —_ " Gerald started, and then corrected himself: "Please, Calista, give me one more chance; give me one more day. I'll find something I can tell _Oncle Gérald_ and Sandrine that will make them understand, and I'll make certain you have a perfect day…"

She opened her mouth to tell him _no_ , she wanted to go home _now_ , but she could see his cousin Sandrine in the distance, watching them from a bit further down the sidewalk; she couldn't make out the older girl's expression, but just the sight of her made her words dry up in her throat; gods, this was worse than being back at school and having to deal with Olivia Avril, because she'd really _wanted_ Gerald's family to like her, and just like Olivia, they obviously thought she was a bloody psycho. _Everything will be fine, indeed._

"They'll be out all day tomorrow," Gerald went on, "It's Monday, my uncle will have work and Sandrine has to attend classes. It will be just you and I, and I can finally show you all the things I _brought_ you here to show you; the boats on the water, the cuisine, the museums — Calista, I have us signed up for a dance class tomorrow evening, after dinner. Please let me take you."

 _That_ made her look up, eyes going wide with alarm. "A _dance class_?" she echoed, "Now I _definitely_ want to go home."

He chuckled. "There, now you sound more like yourself; please tell me you'll stay one more day — I don't think it's too late, I have a plan to make everything perfect…"

She didn't want to stay; she longer felt particularly like doing any of the things he'd just mentioned… but when she looked up at him, his expression was so _earnest_ and so hopeful, that she found herself saying the exact opposite of what she wanted to.

"Fine," she said, "I'll stay _one_ more day, as long as I don't have to spend it with Sandrine, and as long as you were joking about that dance class."

"You won't have to see Sandrine at all tomorrow," Gerald said, "I promise; and she'll be nice to you the rest of today."

It took Calista a few minutes to gather herself, to banish the last remnants of her distress from her face, but she managed it; and then, reluctantly, she let Gerald lead her back to where his cousin waited on the sidewalk, at least having the grace to look slightly sorry for what she'd said.

It didn't occur to Calista until much later that he hadn't said anything one way or the other about the dance class.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

To Gerald's credit, he did try very hard the next day to ensure that everything was perfect, and romantic, but it seemed at first that the universe had no intention of cooperating.

It was raining, when they went down to the waterfront, and since she couldn't cast a water-repelling charm, they had to make do with an umbrella off a street vendor that didn't work half as well as a charm would have; the wind picked up off the water, and drove the rain into their faces, anyway.

They climbed into a tiny tourist train that brought them around to the sights, but they didn't get out and look at much, because of all the rain, and they hadn't been the only ones with the idea, that day; what she knew Gerald had planned to be a fun and intimate little trip was in reality rather like being stuffed into a sardine tin with a load of soaking wet, vaguely disappointed strangers.

They _did_ have to see Sandrine, as she was going away on a school trip later that evening and insisted on having dinner with them before they left, and so their cosy table for two in the bistro Gerald had made reservations for several weeks ago had an extra chair added to it, and the waiter never even bothered to light the little candle in the centre; perhaps, like Calista, he could sense that this dinner was doomed.

Whatever Gerald had said to Sandrine in private had changed her attitude, though it was hard to say if her newfound contrite friendliness was really any _better_ ; she was still asking Calista a slew of questions she didn't feel equipped to answer, and she wouldn't let Gerald interject. Perhaps worst of all, her gaze was still sharp, and painfully observant.

When the waiter came around with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc during the appetizers, Calista had a sudden and complete understanding of why her Aunt Narcissa always seemed to drink it at dinner parties, and she even _almost_ understood her cousin's fondness for firewhiskey; she downed her pitifully small glass in a single sip — evidently, the fancier the restaurant, the smaller the pour — and the knot of tension in her belly began to unwind almost instantly.

Sandrine allowed the waiter to fill her glass and then sipped at it delicately; Gerald frowned, and she could see that he was about to wave the waiter away before he filled the third glass, but Calista firmly nodded _yes_ for him, instead; when the waiter left and she met Gerald's puzzled gaze, she matched it with a stony glare, and wordlessly switched their glasses, giving him the empty one and taking his. She thought she saw a flicker of amusement — she hoped that was what it was, anyway — around his mouth when she lifted the second glass, draining that one, too.

After that, it became _much_ easier to deal with Sandrine; she found herself almost _liking_ the older girl, as she answered her questions easily, making answers up for things she didn't know about with a singular confidence that seemed, as far as she could tell, to be selling even her most ludicrous statements.

"Oh, but _everyone_ in London uses the phrase 'Merlin's balls,'" she said, breezily, in response to Sandrine's interjection after it had mistakenly slipped out when the waiter was pouring the next round of wine, "It's all the rage."

This time, when the waiter hovered over Gerald's glass, Gerald nodded politely.

" _Oui, s'il vous plaît_ ," he said, and as soon as the waiter was gone and Sandrine wasn't looking, he lifted the glass and poured it into hers, instantly doubling its contents.

"I can't believe I've never heard of it," Sandrine said, and the wine must have really helped Calista sound like an authoritative source indeed, because she sounded wistful now, rather than actually skeptical. "Now I really want to travel to London again, soon; it sounds like so much fun, the way you describe it."

"I suppose it is," Calista said blithely, "I'm just so accustomed to it that it all seems very common to me at this point — but, oh, be careful. In polite company, you'd just say 'Merlin's pants'."

It went on in this vein for quite some time; by the end of the meal, they were like old friends. Sandrine even squeezed Calista into a hug when she left — Calista's reflexes were pleasantly numbed by the wine, and she didn't even flinch — and kissed both of her cheeks.

"I will surely come and visit you and _petit Gérald_ soon, in London," she vowed, before she left for the apartment she shared with several of her classmates at the other end of town. "And you'll come see us again here, of course, the next time _Gérald_ does. I'd love to show you around my University."

Gerald was grinning, when he took her hand after that, and led her down a cobbled street.

"Perhaps I should have listened to Sandrine after all, and let you say whatever you wanted to," he said, "You were _fantastic_. You nearly had _me_ believing that _Capra Defricatus_ cures skin rashes, and that everyone in London says 'Merlin's balls' — I just hope she never decides to check her Latin dictionary to realise you've told her goat urine is a miracle cure."

"You know, I rather hope she _does_ ," Calista mused, and then, as she stumbled slightly against him, "Erm — I think I'm a bit drunk."

"You drank six glasses of wine," Gerald observed, "I think I'd be more concerned if you _weren't_ drunk, after that. Do you think you're still up for dancing, though? The studio's just ahead."

"They were small glasses," Calista said. She blinked, and paused; damn it, she _was_ a little wobbly. And _what_ else had he said?

"Dancing?" she echoed, "I thought that dance class thing was a joke."

"It wasn't."

"I can't — Gerald, I can't dance!"

"Well, that's why we're taking a class, isn't it?" he said, reasonably; he slipped one arm steadyingly around her waist, and she found it quite convenient to lean into; the other hand still held hers, and he lifted it to his lips now, pressing a soft kiss on her fingers. "Besides, you told me you were nervous about coming with me to Chadwick and Mira's wedding, because there might be dancing and you don't know how; I thought perhaps if we could remedy that situation, you would be able to relax…"

"Oh," she said, and then: "Fuck. All right, this is most definitely the wine talking, but fine. I'll go. Don't let me fall, though."

"To let you fall," Gerald said, smirking softly, "I'd first have to let you go; and you know, I don't feel particularly inclined to do so. Come on, _mon cœur, dansons._ "

"Hey. When did I say you were allowed to speak French again?"

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

In the end, the night _had_ been nearly perfect, perhaps even enough to make up for the days before it. Calista had to admit that Gerald might have had a slightly worse night than she had, though; after all, she'd stepped on his toes at _least_ a dozen times, during their dance class.

Gerald's uncle either wasn't home or had already gone to bed by the time they returned to his flat; Calista tried to be quiet in case it was the latter, when she and Gerald slipped inside and let themselves into the guest bedroom they'd been staying in, but she definitely tripped over a side table, and then she'd been taken by a massive fit of giggles she couldn't quite explain.

There were two beds, one at either end of the guest room, and so far, Calista had more less lain awake in one of them, biding each night out as well as she could, for fear that if she fell asleep, she might start dreaming, and wake everyone up with her terror. Looking back, that probably hadn't helped her mood the last few days; she wondered if her weariness might have contributed to her difficulty in answering Sandrine's questions, before the wine had come along.

"Here," Gerald said, closing the door softly behind them, and pressing the light switch on the wall, "Drink this."

He handed her a glass of cold water, which she accepted and downed as quickly as she'd finished the first glass of wine.

"Oh, good thinking," she murmured, "Drinking water's supposed to stop me from getting hungover."

"So I've heard," Gerald said, and then: "So, do you think it was worth staying another day?"

Calista set the glass down on the table beside the bed that he had been sleeping in, and then she set herself down on the edge of said bed.

"Actually, I think it was," she admitted. "And I think I recovered well enough, at least with Sandrine, that she might not think I'm _completely_ mental."

"You were fantastic," he said, for the second time. She expected him to sit down on the bed beside her, but he remained standing, a few paces away.

"Good," she said, "I know this is awful to say, but I was starting to think I was going to have to Obliviate both of them by the end of the weekend."

She half-expected him gently scold her for suggesting such a thing — after all, for anyone but a Ministry-licensed Obliviator, it was highly illegal — but instead, he smiled ruefully.

"Don't think the thought hadn't crossed my mind, on Sunday," he said, "But I'm glad it didn't come to that — I've honestly never performed a Memory Charm before, and I don't know if I could do it."

"Oh," Calista said, reaching her hand out towards him; she latched onto his fingers, and pulled him closer, until he was standing right in front of her. "I can. I cast one on Marcus Flint, to make him forget the time he groped my breast in the Owlery."

Gerald blinked. "You _did_? And when did he grope you?"

She realised belatedly that she'd never actually gotten around to telling him about that, and there was a reason for it — the illegality of it, probably, or maybe she hadn't wanted to talk about that awkward memory she'd liberated him of. Oh, well. Neither reason seemed particularly compelling, now.

"Mmhm. I did. And don't worry, it was before... You and I weren't… "

"When?" Gerald asked again, frowning, "Even if _we_ weren't together, if he was… if you didn't want him to… I should have done something, I should have stopped him…"

"No, it wasn't — I mean, it really wasn't like that," Calista clarified, "It was… mean, I was still, you know, _dating_ him, I just didn't want…" Fuck; how had she gotten on this topic?

The memory charm; that was how she'd gotten here. She pushed on. "Anyway, that wasn't my primary reason for the memory charm — it was mostly to stop him telling the whole bloody common room that I'm a Legilimens.

Gerald blinked, again. "You told Flint that?"

"Yeah, unfortunately. I sort of felt like I had to, I kept accidentally reading him, he's got no mental defences whatsoever. Of course, _now_ he has no idea. It's just my dad that still knows, and Professor Dumbledore. And you. It was stupid of me to ever tell _him_."

Gerald frowned, and resisted her effort to pull him down beside her.

"What if you suddenly didn't want _me_ to know, anymore?" he asked, quietly. "Would you Obliviate me?"

"Of course not," she said, but she felt the particular, queasy motion of guilt in her gut; did she know that for a certainty? She'd once thought doing it to _anyone_ would be wrong, and look at how casually she'd just admitted to doing it to Marcus.

"I hope you mean that," he said, still and quiet. "I trust you, Calista. I'd never do that to you, and I sincerely hope you wouldn't do that to me."

"Well, you'd never tell the whole bloody common room what I am, either. What I can do." She tugged his hands again, and he finally relented, dropping into place beside her on the bed. "I trust you, too; and I wouldn't do that."

She found that the second time she said it, it felt a lot more like she meant it; but then, maybe that was because the wine was still working its way through her blood, and she was beginning to feel particularly eager to get onto the _last_ activity that she imagined he had planned for tonight; the one that they'd discussed, several times, before actually arriving in France.

She shifted her grip, letting go of his hands to cup his face, and she kissed him; he didn't immediately reciprocate, and she frowned, pulling back.

"You do believe me, don't you?"

"I do, Calista."

"Then why aren't you kissing me?"

"It isn't that," he said, and then: "Calista, I can kiss you if you want me to, but I can't do anything more than that…"

"Of course I want you to," she said, putting her mouth to his again; he kissed her back this time, but it wasn't like she'd grown used to, it wasn't what she expected from him, now that they were in France and they were _finally_ going to be able to… She felt herself smirk, and she slid her hand down his neck, his chest, even lower…

"Calista, no," Gerald said, breaking away from her; gently, he plucked her hand up by the wrist, and set it back onto her own lap. "I don't think this is a good idea right now."

She frowned, and tilted her head. She thought that vaguely, she knew he was probably right, but she couldn't think of the reason why, just now. The buzz of the wine pulsed at her temples, and then suddenly, she remembered the reason:

"Ah, I know!" she said, triumphantly, forgetting to be quiet; Gerald winced, slightly, and she lowered her voice. "It's the poetry, isn't it? You said you were saving it for later, but I've forbidden you from speaking any French to me."

Gerald laughed, and shook his head. " _Non, mon cœur_ , that's not the reason; the poetry will keep for another time. The reason that I can't do any more than kiss you right now is because you've had six glasses of wine, and you're very drunk, and it wouldn't be right for me to take advantage of that."

 _Ah, yes._ Now that he said it, Calista realised it was logical; and actually, she realised she'd rather not do anything sexual now, either, when she might not be entirely herself, and when she might not remember it perfectly; because when she _did_ finally cross that physical line with him, she wanted to remember it all; she wanted to be clear-headed, and she wanted to participate fully, and to savour it properly.

"I suppose that makes sense," she agreed, "Even though, I uhm… I actually really want you right now."

 _Merlin's balls_ , had she actually said that? Judging by Gerald's sudden, intense flushing, she had.

 _Fuck_ , she thought, and thinking that word just now made her want to giggle, inexplicably.

"Don't think the feeling isn't mutual," Gerald said, a bit ruefully, "But we can't — _I_ can't. It wouldn't be right."

"Yeah. I know."

"Although," Gerald said, and she experienced a shiver of delight at the way his eyes swept over her body, "I sincerely hope you'll wear that dress for me again, on a night when you _haven't_ had six glasses of wine."

Calista grinned; she still felt a bit giggly, and a bit of something _far_ les innocent, but she made herself reach for his hand instead of another body part, and she leaned her head on his shoulder.

"Perhaps I will," she said, "Even though it's apparently _very_ out of style. According to Sandrine."

"I wouldn't know," Gerald said, "And I _definitely_ don't care; you look amazing."

Calista lifted her head, and frowned thoughtfully.

"You know," she said, "That sort of thing really _is_ more romantic in French. I suppose I should let you start speaking it again, after all."

"You suppose that, do you?" Gerald teased, and then: "I told you, though; I'm saving it for later."

"Oh!" Calista said; she leapt up, and very nearly lost her balance, as the wine worked its way up her veins and into her head again; Gerald caught her, steadying her, and in a moment she was even again. "I almost forgot — _I_ was saving something for later, too."

" _Mon cœur,_ I thought we'd already agreed —" Gerald started, but she waved him off, and leaned over her bag, in the corner of the room.

"It's nothing like _that_ ," she assured him, "It's something else I promised I would give you…"

 _Ah._ Her questing fingers found their intended target, and she drew out the small bound booklet; she crossed the room, and presented it to him triumphantly.

"Here — it's one of the advance copies they sent me."

Gerald's eyes lit up as he recognised the publication, and he grinned, accepting it. "Ah, _finally_ ," he said, "I can show it off to everyone I know — every witch and wizard, I know, anyway — and tell them about my beautiful, accomplished, _published_ girlfriend..."

"Erm," Calista cleared her throat. "You, uhm, may not want to show that _particular_ copy off. And I'd, uhm — really rather you didn't."

Gerald blinked, perplexed, and studied the cover, searching for a clue. "I don't understand…?"

"You asked me," Calista reminded him, "To write you a dedication. And I did. It's on the inside cover."

"Oh!" Gerald dutifully opened the cover, and she could see his mouth form the opening salutation silently —

 _Mea dulcis noctua —_

She gave his eyes a minute to roam, grinning in silent anticipation. And then, right about where she thought he would —

Gerald's cheeks filled with colour, and he practically yelped, sucking in a hurried breath.

"You specifically instructed me to make you blush," Calista reminded him, triumphantly, "And I was — I think you would say, _très déterminé à faire un bon travail_." _I was very deterimned to do a good job._

"Merlin's blood," Gerald murmured, and then, a moment later: "You do realise, _mon colibri_ , that _je vais devoir surpasser ma compétition_." _I will have to surpass my competition_ , she thought he'd said.

She grinned mischievously, steadying herself against the night table. " _Vos can tendo_." _You can try._ "But you haven't gotten to the last paragraph yet; you don't even know what you're competing against."

" _Mon cœur, aies pitié_ …"

"I think," Calista said, frowning, "That I'd have a very clever response to that — in Latin, of course — if I weren't still a bit drunk; but I am, and I'm _also_ getting tired of this dress and these bloody shoes. I'll be right back; you keep reading."

She made her way, only slightly unsteady, to the washroom, and changed into a nightdress. By the time she returned, Gerald had changed too, into an enticingly soft-looking set of blue printed pyjamas.

" _Mon colibri malicieux_ ," Gerald murmured, when she had returned, and settled beside him on the edge of his bed, again, " _Tu es vraiment un grand concurrent_ …"

Calista nodded, and settled against him; she recalled, dimly, that she'd been worried about sleeping beside him, about letting herself sleep even in the same room with him, earlier, but as with her confession earlier, about Marcus and about the memory charm, her concerns seemed insubstantial and far away.

"Let me see if I can manage this poetry thing, too," she murmured, and then repeated him: " _Je suis un grand concurrent…"_ she paused thoughtfully, and then guessed: " _Mais tu n'abandons pas facilement?_ "

Gerald blinked. "Erm — wow. Did you really just come up with that?"

Calista nodded, and grinned sleepily, quite pleased with herself. "Was it correct?" she asked, mouth near his neck, head still resting contently on his shoulder.

"It was close enough," Gerald agreed, pulling her close, careful to keep his hands in polite places. "I'm certainly impressed."

Somehow — she wasn't quite certain which of them initiated it, but she was pleased nonetheless — they ended up lying down, curled close in Gerald's guest bed, and she tucked her head happily under his chin; again, her reasons for resisting this the last few nights seemed very distant, and very unimportant. The wine still pulled slowly at her veins and at her reflexes, but it did seem somehow less insistent than before.

"This is all right?" Gerald murmured, quietly, a moment before she'd fallen asleep, cuddled securely in his arms.

"Mhm," she agreed, tiredly; she shifted closer. And then, inexplicably, a fact popped into her head; something that seemed suddenly like something he would want to know.

"You know, you _did_ stop Marcus, in a way, that time in the Owlery that I was talking about earlier," Calista told him sleepily, "He stopped because Uruz flew in and crapped on his head."

A moment later — Calista had already started to fall asleep again — she was gently shaken by the rocking of Gerald's laughter against her shoulders.

"Remind me," he murmured, earnestly, near her ear, "To give Uruz whole packet of Owl Treats when we get back to England."

"Mkay," Calista agreed. And then — mercifully, miraculously — she fell asleep, completely forgetting to be afraid of what the night might bring.

* * *

 ** _(A/N:_** _Very long chapter! And I have been trying to avoid A/Ns, but wanted to respond to an unsigned review: Yes, there will be scenes soon from Severus' POV. As always, thank you for reading!)_


	8. Revealing

**8\. Revealing**

Severus Snape's eyes rolled, for the fortieth or fiftieth time, over the same line of text. It had been the same yesterday, when he'd tried to read it, and the day before that, and the day before _that_.

The first line of text was no problem; he'd gotten past that, _An Experimental Examination of Ancient Runes as Alternative Charmwork Conduits_. It was the very next line that he could not seem to get beyond: _researched and written by Calista Snape_.

Severus' eyes leapt over the top of the journal's edge, again, to the armchair across from him, but the chair was stubbornly empty, _again,_ just as the opposite chair at the not-quite-right kitchen table had been, and just as the tiny bedroom at the end of his main corridor was, every time he glanced in, somehow expecting otherwise.

As if to remind himself of that point, Severus rose suddenly, journal still clutched in his hand. Purposefully, he strode out of his study and down the short corridor; the door was ajar, and by the aura of witchfire light atop the now-empty dresser, he could make out the shapes of the stacks and stacks of books, released from their storage downstairs, that he had piled upon the bed.

He'd meant to remove the bed; he'd meant to remove the dresser, too: after all, Merlin only knew that Calista could use the extra wardrobe space at home, given the seemingly endless array of clothing Narcissa insisted on lavishing upon her niece. What he had _not_ meant to do was to replace the tiny witchfire nightlight the last time it had burnt out; and yet, there it was, glowing at him with a sort of self-satisfied defiance that _also_ reminded him of his absent daughter.

Severus scowled, and pulled the door shut behind him with an impatient snap of his wrist. None of this was useful, none of this was helpful, and moreover, none of this sort of thinking had _any point_. Calista was undoubtedly _fine_ , as evidenced by the sardonic way she had addressed her last few letters, including the one that had contained the very journal he still clutched in his long fingers, and further supported by the fact that he had not received an urgent entreaty on her behalf from Arabella Figg during her holiday in Muggle France.

She hadn't said much about the trip, in her last owl. She'd told him she was home safely, and not much else. He tried not to wonder if that meant everything had gone horribly and she didn't know how to tell him so, or if it meant everything had gone swimmingly and she didn't _care_ to tell him so, and he tried not to entertain the question of which possibility made his gut twist more.

Gerald Boot had owled him, too, confirming that Calista was home safely, and that had been an admittedly appreciated gesture; it was one of the reasons that he had to grudgingly admit he actually rather _liked_ the boy, and, he supposed, it was a large part of why he had done what he had, during his free slot last Friday afternoon; it was why he'd taken a trip to a particular dingy public building in Manchester _instead_ of going home to see his daughter, and why he'd spent much of the weekend poring over old, typewritten records rather than preparing his lesson plans for the week, which in turn had led to the nightmare of a week he was having _now_.

Severus frowned, and glanced down at the journal in his hand. He was being ridiculous; Calista was _fine_ , despite the fact that she had not called him on the fire, nor sent him a letter that was longer than a dozen sentences, nor — at least as of the last time he'd spoken to Draco — gone to visit her aunt and uncle _or_ written her cousin. Did she even know what the poor boy had suffered, at the hands of that blasted hypocrite Alastor Moody?

 _An Experimental Examination of Ancient Runes as Alternative Charmwork Conduits_ , Severus read, lifting the journal again, _researched and written by Calista Snape_ —

What if she _wasn't_ 'fine', though? What if her short letters, her relative silence on the subject of France, her avoidance of her closest family, were all evidence to another recurrence of her dark, self-destructive moods, her sleepless nights; what if she was lying awake, troubled and alone, dark eyes wide with horrors? What if she was still waking, even now, hands leaping and scrabbling across her own spine, desperately searching for the hilt of a phantom blade?

He felt himself turn, and his eyes went again towards the now-firmly-shut door at the end of the corridor; but there were no answers there, not in any of the stack of books he meant to shelve in there and hadn't yet been able to, not in the quiet study, and certainly not at the other end of the new, alien kitchen table. Not in the fireplace, either; there was no tell-tale flash of flame, no warning crackle indicating that she was calling, and he was tired of waiting for a sign that wasn't coming.

Severus clutched the thin journal under his arm, and marched out of his quarters; he let his feet carry him to a place he knew well, a place that he frequently went, whenever isolation temporarily lost its appeal; a place he had been going, of late, _far_ more often than he ever had before.

Severus slipped into the Hogwarts staffroom, passing the gargoyles with minimum interaction: and then, as soon as he'd entered the familia, panelled room, he was immediately greeted by a warm, and unexpectedly welcome voice:

"Ah, Severus! Just the man I've been hoping to run into," Filius Flitwick's unmistakeable voice rang out, cheerily, over the spread pages of some undoubtedly academic read.

Severus raised a brow. "Hello, Filius." He scanned the room; his lip curled, as he noticed a particular, grizzly figure in the corner, who appeared to be taking a nap, or at least, _half_ a nap. While one eye was closed, the other spun continuously in its socket, brilliant blue gaze darting from figure to figure, from corner to corner, as Moody slept, or, more likely, _pretended_ to sleep. Perhaps coming here had been a bad idea.

Filius grinned, and lifted his reading material from the table — Severus felt a strange, warming little _pull_ in his gut, as he instantly recognised the very same cover he'd been carrying around for the better part of an hour; and, really, for the better part of a fortnight. He decided to stay in the staffroom, after all, despite the figure in the corner of the room.

"I've recently finished a particularly _fascinating_ read," his colleague said, "And I hoped you might want to engage in some scholarly discussion over it."

"I might," Severus said, pulling out a chair opposite Filius', "If I had finished reading it. I confess, I've been plagued by… well, you might say _distractions_."

He felt his eyes flick uncomfortably over to Moody again, though he couldn't quite say why; there were a dozen reasons, of course, why the man's presence might unnerve him, and _still_ , he felt a nervous, twitching sort of energy whenever he was in the room with the man that wasn't explained by any of them. Paranoia, he supposed; hadn't his very perceptive daughter often accused him of possessing it in spades?

"Ah, well then, I won't spoil the finer points for you," Filius said, and then, a bit sentimentally: You must be quite proud of her, Severus. I know I am."

Severus felt himself smirk softly. "Now, Filius, don't tell me you're still sore she didn't end up in Ravenclaw."

Filius chuckled. "I suppose the Hat doesn't make mistakes," he said, and there was a brief flicker in his expression; Severus narrowed his eyes, but the moment was quickly gone. "Still, I will readily admit that she possesses certain traits that _would_ have made her a fine Ravenclaw: a quick wit, a remarkable capacity for curiosity; ah, and of course, a sharp mind."

Severus' smirk deepened. "She does possess those things," he admitted, and then: "I imagine she gets it from her father."

A sudden sharp, piercing whistle rang out, causing Filius to start; Severus avoided doing so only barely, as his eyes swept to the source of the sound. In the corner, Moody was stirring suddenly, both eyes wide, back bowing as he fiddled with something on his person.

"Wasn't really sleeping," he grunted, to both of them or to neither of them; it was had to tell, for his one dark eye seemed to be fixed on Filius, while the blue one darted and rolled, scanning the room, and then coming to rest squarely on Severus. "Never do for more than an hour at a time."

Severus and Filius exchanged a look at this odd proclamation; an instant later, Moody was unscrewing the top of his ubiquitous hip flask.

"Can never be too careful," he advised, catching them looking; he took a sizeable swig from his flask, and then wiped his mouth with the back of a scarred hand. Severus caught a brief, thin smear of a muddy brown liquid across the marred skin, before Moody swiped his hand purposefully over his robes. "Constant vigilance!"

He rose then, and hobbled over towards Filius with a thumping, uneven gate. Severus could hear the scraping of wood on wood as he went; he kept his eyes on Moody, just as Moody seemed, always, to be keeping that blasted blue one on _him_.

 _I'm keeping my eye on you, Snape_ , Moody had said, on the second day of term, and it was beginning to appear that he had meant it quite literally, _I've got your number, laddie_. Severus felt his lip curl, again, unbidden.

"What are we reading?" Moody asked, snatching up Flitwick's copy of the journal; briefly, Severus was spared the unnerving glare of the magical blue eye as it whizzed over the surface of the page.

"Experimental Examination of Ancient Runes…" Moody muttered, and then, "Calista _Snape_ , eh? Your wife, Snape, or have you got a sister I don't know about?"

Severus felt his jaw tighten. "Calista is my daughter," he snapped, low and impatient.

Moody's bushy brow rose; he looked back to the page, and then back to Severus. Moody's features quirked and shifted a moment, in thought or perhaps even in pain; with the man's network of disfiguring scars, it was honestly difficult to interpret his expression.

"Interesting name, Calista," Moody observed, in his gravelly voice, "Funny though. I haven't seen her at Hogwarts."

"She graduated last year," Severus said, shortly.

"Did she?" Moody affected a grunt of surprise, and _then_ : "She'll be, what, 'roundabout eighteen years of age, then?"

Severus didn't open his mouth; instead, he jerked a brief nod, not quite certain why this line of questioning was setting off alarm bells in his mind, but acknowledging grimly that it _was_.

"Interesting, that," Moody went on, as if to clarify and quantify Severus' alarm, "That'd make her almost exactly the same age as another Calista, one that went missing over a decade ago; had every Auror under me keeping eye out for _that_ Calista, I remember it well."

"I can't imagine what interest Aurors would have had in a small child," Severus made himself say, neutrally; the trouble was, he could imagine _exactly_ the sort of interest a squad of Aurors of Moody's ilk might have found in that _particular_ child, and the idea of them finding her before he had, when the war had been raging viciously und unscrupulously on _both_ sides, made his skin crawl nearly as unpleasantly as contemplating her capture by Bellatrix's cohorts did.

"Information," Moody said stoutly, solidifying Severus' worst impression, "We reckoned she could lead us straight to one of our most-wanted — actually, Snape, I think you were well-acquainted with the very person I'm speaking of. Reckon you maybe even knew the girl." Moody's mouth curved grotesquely, into something that might equally have been a smile or a grimace. " _Did_ you know Bellatrix Lestrange's girl, Snape, or did you happen upon the same name for your own daughter purely out of coincidence?"

"She's a fine young woman," Filius said suddenly and firmly, startling Severus, who had nearly forgotten the man was still in the room, "If you met her, Alastor, you would see it in a matter of moments, just as you would see that she is not at all like her mother was."

"Is that so?" Moody's eyes were lit with a sudden interest that was, to Severus, unsettlingly keen. "Not just the same name, then; the same _girl_. Very interesting fact, that."

"Once again," Severus said, attempting to disguise his growing discomfort with dismissive impatience, "I fail to imagine what interest an Auror, retired or otherwise, might have in an ordinary teenaged girl."

Moody lifted his bushy brow. "Ordinary?" he echoed, with an exaggerated, sweeping glance between the journal in his hand and Filius at the table, "Seems to me that being published in a research journal is a bit _extraordinary_ for a teenager. You'd agree, Filius?"

"She's a fine young woman," Filius said again, stoutly, "A credit to her father, to her House, and to Hogwarts generally."

"Oh, aye?" Moody said, as smoothly as if he'd been waiting for precisely that response, "And which House would that be — Slytherin, Iike her mother, I imagine?"

"Yes," Severus snarled, "Calista was indeed in _my house_."

"A rather well-respected Slytherin Prefect, I might add," Filius interjected, and for once, Severus was loathe to acknowledge his colleague's praise of his daughter; he couldn't shake the sudden and intense belief that the less reason Alastor Moody had to take interest in Calista and her parentage, the better it would be for _both_ of them, "And a recipient of an award for Special Services to the School; you can see it on display in the Trophy Room."

Severus suppressed a wince of seemingly inexplicable dread, as Moody's other brow shot up.

"Well, then, there we have it. You're a liar, Snape."

Moody's tone was conversational, but the sharp look in his eyes as they slid back to Severus — _that_ was about as casual as a hippogriff in a tuxedo. "She doesn't sound _ordinary_ at all. Maybe I _will_ meet her, someday." He quirked a little grin — or smirk — that unsettled Severus even further, and then he suddenly slapped the open journal against the palm of his free hand.

"In the meantime," Moody said, black eye shifting back towards Filius while the magical one zoomed around the room again, "You don't mind if I borrow this, do you, Filius? I'm suddenly in the mood for a good read."

Severus practically choked on a snarl, but Filius nodded, enthusiastically. "Oh, yes, Alastor, go right ahead! I'd love to discuss it in detail, when you've finished — Severus you'll join us, won't you?"

Severus felt a viper, working its way up his throat; he swallowed, forcing it back down.

"Of course," he said, tasting the bitterness of the viper's poison in his throat, even if he kept it from quite unfurling on his tongue, "I wouldn't even consider missing it."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

"So, first there's the bridal procession, and _then_ there's the stupid dancing?"

Gerald Boot grinned, looking up from his own book to see Calista, huddled at the other end of the sofa, and frowning with concentration over one of the books he'd brought over.

"I'm afraid there are quite a few things missing between those two events," he told her, momentarily distracted from his own reading, a much loftier volume on Eastern European runes, "The procession is part of the ceremony, you see, and it's one of the _first_ parts. The dancing comes later, at the reception."

He saw Calista's profile twist into a familiar scowl. "How long _are_ these bloody wedding things?"

"Well, the ceremony is usually at least an hour; sometimes more, sometimes less. It depends on where the wedding is held, and how formal it is, and —"

"Let me rephrase," Calista cut in dryly, glancing up from her 'homework' to meet his gaze, "How long is _this_ bloody wedding thing going to last?"

"It's probably going to be pretty long," Gerald admitted, carefully inserting a bookmark into his book, and then closing the cover and setting it on the table. "Chadwick told me that Mira's family are very traditional; they're even having the wedding in a Catholic church, which isn't supposed to be allowed, since neither of _them_ are Catholic; neither of them will admit it, of course, but I strongly suspect a Confundus Charm was involved."

"I'm certain this won't surprise you," Calista said, a bit sardonically, "But I've never been to a wedding _or_ a church."

"You know," Gerald mused, with a small smile, "I did guess that, when you pointed to the photograph of the clergy in that first book, and asked me why all those Muggles were wearing wizard robes."

"That's what it looked like," Calista insisted, and then: "Except for their hats; they were ridiculous. Honestly, who would want to be seen with one of _those_ on their heads, instead of a sensible, pointed black hat?"

Gerald stifled another grin; he knew Calista would think it was at her expense, but really, it was just the idea of imagining a Muggle ever describing the sorts of hat Calista was describing as _sensible_.

"I couldn't say," he said, instead of pointing out the irony, "I suppose it's just —"

He was interrupted by a sudden merry crackling, across the room; the fireplace leapt to life, green flames appearing in what had been a cool, empty hearth only seconds before. An instant later, a tallish man in severe black robes was unfolding himself from the fireplace, and an instant after _that_ , Calista had leapt up from the other end of the sofa, leaving her book forgotten on the cushion she'd just vacated.

" _Dad!"_ he heard her exclaim, joyfully, and then he couldn't see her face for a moment, buried in her father's shoulder. Severus Snape's black-clad arms came up, encircling his daughter every bit as eagerly as she'd called her greeting out, and Gerald tried to ignore the strange, forlorn tightness that always formed in his throat, when he saw other people with their fathers. He knew it had to be the same, for Calista and mothers, but knowing that didn't make him feel any less left out, just then.

"How have you been?" Calista asked eagerly, when she finally let go of her father, "How are your classes? Are Percy's brothers still blowing up cauldrons? Have they started preparing the school for the Triwizard Tournament? Have —"

Gerald swallowed a lump of unease, as the rest of her stream of inquiries went over his head. He had been trying not to think about the tournament, about the terrible, infamous track record of injuries and even _deaths_. He had been reminding himself, whenever the thought _did_ come up, that Terry wasn't old enough to try and become a Champion under the new rules, and he had been trying not to consider just how many _loopholes_ Terry might find and might try to avail himself of.

He saw Severus smirk fondly, eyes surveying Calista in that careful, inventorying manner that had been one of Gerald's first clues that Calista's father was not at all like his own, despite the abrasive impression he made.

"I'm well enough," Severus said, addressing her questions in order, "My classes are just as full of dunderheads who can't tell asphodel from asparagus as they usually are; those blasted Weasley twins, mercifully, have decided _not_ to continue on to the N.E.W.T. level, and the —"

Severus' gaze had shifted, over Calista's shoulder towards the sofa where Gerald sat; and then, his eyes had narrowed, his expression darkening.

"Precisely _what_ ," Severus growled, turning his back on Calista, and advancing towards Gerald with such purpose that it was all he could do not to flinch, bewildered. "Is the meaning of _this_?"

Severus' sudden alarm was made instantly clear, the second that he snatched up the top book from the stack on the coffee table. _Modern Wedding Planning_ , Gerald could just see the title, through the man's pale, clutching fingers; he saw his former professor's dark eyes land on each of the other titles in turn: _The Traditional Wedding_ , _The Definitive Guide to the Perfect Marriage Ceremony_ — and then, his gaze swept to the book he must have seen Calista discarding just when he'd arrived, the one that glared up at them all from the cushion of the sofa, lurid pink lettering like a brand: _So, You're Getting Married?_

"It's — sir, it isn't — that is, we're only _going_ —" Gerald stammered, still willing his mouth to catch up to the conclusion his brain had reached. He took a breath, and tried to order his thoughts, his words, into a linear fashion, but Calista spoke first.

"Wait a minute — eugh, no! You can't seriously think that those books are about _Gerald and I_?"

Gerald felt his mouth pull down despite himself; they weren't, of course, but she didn't have to sound so thoroughly horrified at the idea…

"Then _what_ ," Severus asked grimly, "Are they for?"

"My cousin Chadwick's wedding," Gerald heard himself answer, even though his eyes were on Calista, "This weekend. Calista's coming as my date, you remember? Since she's never been to a wedding… I brought the books so she would know what to expect."

Calista nodded vigorously, supporting his statement. "Yes, the books are for his cousin's wedding, so I don't make a complete idiot of myself. _Merlin's balls_ , Dad _;_ you can't seriously have thought those were for _me_!"

"Language, Calista," Severus said automatically, but it wasn't the epithet that made Gerald frown. Was the idea really so absurd to her, then, so unthinkable?

 _Of course it is_ , a nasty voice in his head hissed, _you're disfigured; and you're a half-blood at best. She's said it before… her family won't ever approve, not really._

 _Calista doesn't care_ , he answered himself, stoutly, _she's better than that, and she loves me…_

Gerald felt the weight of eyes on him, and tried quickly to rearrange his features into something that might be appropriate in the circumstances; an amused smile, perhaps, and then he lifted his gaze, meeting Calista's — only to realise that it _wasn't_ hers he felt, at all.

While Calista had turned towards him, and was hurriedly stacking the wedding planning books facedown on into a pile, it was Severus who was looking directly at him; for an instant, it was just the weight of the man's gaze he felt, but _then_ —

For an instant, he felt the same uncomfortable prickling feeling in his forehead that he had felt during his first few visits to the sprawling, opulent manor that her aunt and uncle called 'home' — and it didn't feel any better now than it had, then.

Gerald struggled to clear his mind, and his expression, but he hadn't been on guard, hadn't expected to _have_ to be, and now it was a bit like trying _not_ to think of a specific thing. He frowned, just as the uneasy pressure against his mind seemed to retreat.

"Mr. Boot," Snape said, quietly. Gerald met his gaze steadily, despite what he was fairly certain his former professor had just tried to do to him; perhaps even because of it. "May I have a private word, in the kitchen?"

"Certainly, sir," he said, pleased with the steadiness of his tone, despite the curious flutter in his gut; he interpreted a brief, quizzical look from Calista, but then she went back to the books, shoving them into the furthest corner of the coffee table, as if they had personally offended her.

Gerald followed his former professor's black robes into the kitchen, and squared his shoulders.

"You're calling me 'Mr. Boot' again, instead of Gerald," he observed, before Mr. Snape could open his mouth, "According to what Calista's told me, that means you're displeased with me."

"Oh, does it?" the older man replied, a bit sardonically, "What have you done, then, that should 'displease' me?"

He managed to make it sound like an accusation, and so despite the elevated, thready beating of his heart in his chest, Gerald matched his tone precisely when he countered:

"I really haven't the faintest idea, sir," he said, "Though I imagine it must have something to do with whatever you were searching for, when you attempted to use legilimency on me, just a moment ago."

He didn't know precisely what sort of reaction he was expecting; obviously some part of him thought it might be a violent one, because he was gripped by a powerful urge to flinch, to retreat backwards, to quickly apologise for his tone and take back what he had said — but he resisted all of those urges with about as much willpower as he could muster, because if his life so far had taught him _anything_ , it was never to let someone who was trying to intimidate him see that they had succeeded.

Instead of striking him, though, or snarling at him, or shouting, or taking any sort of aggressive action, Severus Snape _smirked_ , with a grim sort of satisfaction.

"Let's establish one thing right now," Snape said, softly — _so_ softly, in fact, that Gerald had the distinct impression he was trying to keep his words from travelling into the next room, where Calista was, "If I had any interest in your secrets, I imagine I could have them; but what you felt was no more an _attempt_ at legilimency than a would-be intruder rattling a doorknob is an _attempted_ break-in."

Gerald felt a cold weight settle in his gut, at the implicit threat; it was hard to imagine a worse intrusion than one into his very _mind_ ; and then, so uncannily timed that Gerald was forced to wonder briefly and wildly whether Snape was already making good on his threat —

"I'm not threatening you, Mr. Boot. I'm pleased and slightly impressed, in fact, that you noticed the 'rattling at the door', if you will; most would not have. It confirms my long-held suspicion that your natural talent for Occlumency is likely considerable."

Gerald frowned, mouth going hard. "How do you know about that? Calista wouldn't have told you without asking me first."

He said it before stopping to consider whether he quite believed it; but she _wouldn't,_ would she? He wondered if he had ever explicitly asked her not to tell anyone what he could so, or if he'd assumed that, as an Occlumens herself, she would simply _know_ he wouldn't want anyone told. But still; she hadn't told her father anything about the evolving situation with Gerald's own father until he had given his consent for her to do so, even though she'd believed her father could help.

"You seem very confident in your assertion," Snape said lightly, "And equally confident in the assumption that I will take kindly to the idea that Calista might keep secrets from me on your behalf."

 _Obviously, she does, as she's my girlfriend_ , Gerald was tempted to retort, in an imitation of a tone Calista herself often took; but he took a breath instead, considering his words carefully, the way he always tried to.

"I expect, sir," he said, far more steadily than he felt, "That we each feel that we can trust Calista not to repeat things we've told her in confidence."

Again, Gerald braced himself to remain as even-tempered and outwardly patient as possible, even if Snape grew defensive or lashed out — a tactic he'd found remarkably effective with Calista, if slightly exhausting — but it seemed as if he didn't need to bother; Snape was remarkably calm himself, almost _pleasant_ , as if Gerald were answering his questions correctly in class — but how could that be? The man wasn't his professor anymore, and this cramped, slightly dingy kitchen certainly wasn't a classroom.

"You're quite correct." Snape said lightly, "On every count. She did not tell me that you were an Occlumens; and in any case, if she had, I suspect it would have been disappointingly anticlimactic, as I'm nearly certain I knew it before she did." His former professor's mouth quirked again, then, almost pleasantly. "Calista, you see, holds the privacy of others in a _much_ higher regard than I do; I really have raised her to be better than I am."

"I suppose that's —" _a very good thing, then._ At the last second, Gerald again bit his words back, recognising they were probably not the wisest choice, given the circumstances. " — what any good parent tries to do," he finished, instead, though even _he_ heard the clip in his tone.

"You're cross with me," Snape observed; Gerald felt himself frown again, and he felt his heart pick up another burst of speed.

"Yes, I suppose I am," he admitted, mildly surprising himself with his honesty; but then, hadn't this conversation begun because the man just made it _very_ clear how pointless it would be to lie? "With all this talk of keeping secrets, as it turns out, I don't take well to someone threatening to invade my mind —"

"Ah, yes," Snape interrupted, with a dismissive little flick of his fingers, "I should have realised you would be defensive; after all, Ravenclaws do value the mind above all else. But secrets, Mr. Boot, are precisely what I'd like to speak with you about."

"I hardly think that reacting poorly to a blatant invasion of privacy is a trait that's exclusive to Ravenclaws. In fact — "

Snape's next words were sufficiently unexpected so as to stop whatever measured response Gerald might have laboured over:

"My mother was in Ravenclaw, you know."

Gerald blinked, utterly surprised. He was _certain_ that Calista had never told him that, before. Hadn't _all_ of her family, except for the disowned cousin, been in Slytherin?

"She valued her mind above _everything_ else; certainly above the family she willfully spited to be with my good-for-nothing Muggle father, and, I think, above any misfortune or horror that he brought upon her _or_ I."

Snape was reaching into the pocket of his robes now, and Gerald was immediately on alert; he had a mad, sudden thought that he was going for his wand; his own fingers tensed, but before he had quite decided to draw his own wand in response, the older man produced an innocuous-looking sheaf of papers; still, Gerald didn't quite relax.

"My mother taught me to read before she had properly taught me to walk," Snape went on, "I like to think that she knew, even then, that I would turn to knowledge for help with my problems, before I would run; but you see, that was precisely where my mother and I _were_ different. I always used my mind to look for answers, for knowledge, for _a plan_. My mother used hers to escape the need to find any of those things."

Gerald swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat. Something in the older man's speech was achingly familiar, yes, but it was also _heavy_ ; he sensed a sharp, pronounced gravity in each of the man's measured pauses, in every soft, low word. It reminded him of the way Calista often sounded, right before she described one of her own horrors; right before she revealed something she wasn't certain she wanted him to know.

"My mother wanted to fight back, but she didn't think she had it in her; she didn't think she had it in her to raise me alone, either, and so she stayed, and she collected insults and bruises the way she had once collected Gobstones, and she told me all of the things she probably needed to hear for herself. She kept me out of _his_ way, as much as she could, and she groomed me for ambition, because she thought it was my best chance to escape without her; it never occurred to her, or to me, that we might have escaped together."

"I'm sorry, sir," Gerald ventured; it wasn't precisely the right thing to say, but what was?

"Oh, not _nearly_ as sorry as I am," Snape said, and though his tone was still quite soft, Gerald could hear the harsh undertone just the same. And then: "He never quite broke her, because she always had one place to go that he could not follow; she told me, once: _'He can't reach me here'._ " Snape tapped his temple, briefly, with his free hand; Gerald noticed that the hand holding the sheaf of papers was steady, and he didn't see how it could be; he knew his wouldn't be — hell, his hands _weren't_ steady, despite his best efforts, and it wasn't even his story.

"And then, when I was nineteen years old, my mother had a stroke, or so the Muggle doctors he brought her to said — and suddenly, she no longer had the same mind to escape to that she had always counted on."

Gerald felt a cold weight, this time squeezing him from outside; nineteen years old was how old _he_ was now, and he couldn't stop himself from imagining what it would be like, finding his own mother the same way; and of course, if his mother had still _lived with_ his father, he would have had to wonder…

"He wasn't home when it happened," Severus said, sharp and cold and low, "Tearing the truth from his mind was the first thing I did, when I learned what had happened; but it didn't matter to me that he hadn't been there, that he hadn't done anything to her _this time_. He had already done enough, already _taken enough_ , and I wasn't going to let him have anything else that she had ever cared for; that meant that he would never see _me_ again — not that he wanted to — and it meant that I wasn't going to let him take her books, or her home, or even her _memory_."

There was a queer sort of glint in the older man's black eyes — narrower and harsher than Calista's, but precisely the same colour — and a slithering around his mouth when he said the word 'memory' that reminded Gerald suddenly that he had never considered _where_ Calista had learned to perform a Memory Charm. He managed, barely, to suppress a shiver of cold dread.

"My mother's family took her back, finally, to care for her; after so many years of ignoring her, they only took her back when her mind was so broken she hardly knew who they were. I, of course, am not welcome among them, given my halfblood status," — and here Snape's mouth curled into a wretched sneer, "So the night I dropped her off was the last time I saw my mother. I couldn't tell if she even really knew me, or if she was humouring me."

The cold dread in Gerald's gut was a gaping hole, suddenly. No _wonder_ his former professor came across so bitter, sometimes; and now suddenly, he thought he understood why the man had come so readily to his defense when he, Gerald, had faced criticism from Calista's other relatives for being a halfblood, himself.

"That's… sir, that's awful. I'm sorry. I don't know what to say."

Snape's sneer pulled down once more. "I find it advisable, in such situations, to say nothing."

He shifted, holding the sheaf of papers Gerald had nearly forgotten about between them.

"I haven't told you any of this because I want your sympathy or your opinion," Snape said, and it struck Gerald that his tone was almost precisely like the one Calista used to resort to, when she regretted telling him something personal. Hearing it now, in her father's voice, reminded him of how long it had actually _been_ since she'd gone hard and distant that way with him. He filed that observation away, to return to later; Snape shifted, brandishing the stack of papers Gerald had forgotten he was even holding.

"I've told you this because I think I can help you; you told me, I think, that there is very little evidence you have that you can present to the Muggle courts, against your father."

Gerald felt himself nod, tightly; how had he not known this was going to circle back around?

"My mother's friend…" he started, but did he _really_ think that the legwork his mother and that retired policewoman had done was going to be enough? Wasn't that precisely why he tried so hard not to _think_ about October, and why he felt so hopeless, whenever he did?

"I had even less," Calista's father said quietly, "My mother never filed a single report, in any court; she never engaged any legal system against him; and yet, when she was suddenly incapacitated, I managed to stop my 'father' from keeping _anything_ that had ever belonged to her, in whole or in part — and, except for _one_ asset that I think we've already covered — I did it with perfect legality, in the Muggle legal system."

Gerald gaped; and still, the papers were held out in front of him, a sheaf of documents that looked, to his mostly untrained eye, to be precisely what the older man had said — copies of legal documents, some handwritten, some typewritten, and all of them on plain, Muggle paper.

"Take them," Severus Snape said, and he flicked a sharp, cool glance towards the kitchen door; it was still firmly shut behind them. "The details are different, but you should find the answers you need in all the same statutes."

"Sir, I — I can't believe —" Gerald made himself meet the older man's gaze steadily. "I can't believe you'd give me these, but I _also_ can't thank you enough."

He reached for the papers, but Snape didn't quite let go, yet. He kept his own fingers curled tightly at the other edge of the bundle, and then he leaned forward over it, dark eyes formidable as he closed in on Gerald.

"There is one slight complication," Snape said, and he flicked another brief glance to the door, and _then_ —

"As you'll recall, we began this conversation on the topic of secrets, and _I_ was testing your ability to keep one."

Gerald felt an unpleasant sensation begin to crawl up the base of his spine. In another instant, he had a reason for it.

"You must not let Calista see these papers, or find out anything that's in them," Snape said, grimly, "She doesn't know."

"She doesn't know _any_ of it?" Gerald heard himself ask, incredulously, for once forgetting to think before he spoke, "How can she _not know_? It's her own grandparents —"

" _Enough_ ," Snape interrupted, with a soft sort of finality, "She knows as much as she needs to. She knows what sort of man my father was; she knows a small amount of what my mother endured; and since we now live in the house she knows I grew up in with them, she has made the assumption that they are both dead, and I've never had a compelling reason to tell her otherwise."

"So that's the deal, then?" Gerald asked, as his mind fitted the pieces together, coming up with a terrible conclusion, "In exchange for your helping me, you're expecting that I will keep this —" he waved the papers slightly with a trembling hand, " — secret from Calista?"

"Oh, very good," Snape said, a bit snidely, "Ten points to Ravenclaw."

"I can't — sir, I don't think I can do that. She would want to know about this —"

"Would she?" Severus asked, emitting a soft sort of hiss before he went on: "The story she accepts does not cause her any grief. The truth might; and wouldn't you agree that she has quite enough of her own, without borrowing any more of _mine_?"

"I…" Gerald swallowed, and he could feel himself start to quail, under the cool intensity of his former professor's gaze; but then, he he saw a flash of memory, of a very similar and at once, very _different_ pair of eyes, regarding him just as fiercely through a crackling fireplace in his cousin's home:

" _Don't ever decide for someone else what they'd be happier remembering or not remembering,"_ Calista had once admonished him, in a situation that felt horribly, remarkably close to the one he was in now. _"It shouldn't be your choice to make."_

"I'm sorry," Gerald started, already feeling the weight of the heavy decision lifting off his shoulders, knowing he was making the right one, "But I can't promise that. Take the papers. I'll figure something else out."

"Before you decide," Snape said, gaze flicking past Gerald yet again to the firmly-closed kitchen door, "I'd like you to know that I understand, and even admire, your reluctance to agree to my terms; but the problem is that we can't easily back out, now, because even if I take the papers back from you this instant, you still have the knowledge of what I've told you."

Gerald felt his earlier crawling shiver of dread return, tenfold; he set his mouth, grimly.

"I'm not threatening you," Snape said; it was the second time he'd said it, and Gerald believed it even less this time.

He forced himself to consider grimly whether Snape would cast a Memory Charm on him, or whether he would use legilimency to remove the memory of their conversation; he knew the man could do the latter, because Calista had told him that was how he'd removed _her_ memories, long ago. Would he even be able to tell that it had been done?

Still, whatever Snape's plan was, he didn't seem to be in a terrible hurry to get to it.

"I wonder if you recall, Gerald, a conversation we began quite some time ago, and never finished? A conversation about _intentions_?"

Gerald blinked, caught off-guard by the abrupt change in topic; the papers still hung from his fingers, a bit limply, as if they could sense his reluctance to formally accept them, and the implicit vow of silence Snape had just told him they represented. It took him a few seconds to register that Snape was calling him by his given name, again, instead of his surname.

"You mean… you mean when you asked me what my intentions with Calista were, right after our friend had been attacked by a basilisk?" Slowly, carefully, he let his fingers continue towards his pocket, watching the movement of Snape's hands very carefully, as well.

"Excellent recall," Snape said, as if Gerald were still his student and had just recited the twelve uses of dragon's blood, "I suppose you can recall the rest of that conversation just as well, then? The part where I allowed you to defer your answer to that question until after your friend had recovered?"

"I do…"

"Ah," Snape said, with the air of one setting a trap, Then you recall, naturally, that we never _did_ finish that conversation; I never _did_ hold you to an answer."

"I always wondered about that," Gerald admitted, "I certainly thought you would… and when you didn't, I suppose I hoped that it meant you didn't need to ask, that you'd already seen —" Gerald swallowed, and then he was struck by a sudden awful thought, one so horrid and terrifying that it made his mouth suddenly dry, and his legs suddenly weak.

"Unless you did," he said, and his words echoed flatly around the small room, "Unless you _did_ ask me, and I just can't remember it now…"

Snape's brow went up. "Is that what you think?"

"I suppose I don't know what to think," Gerald said, "I suppose I wouldn't know, would I?"

"Rhetorically speaking, you might, depending on how it was done," Snape said, "But I suspect it's not the rhetorical answer you're interested in at the moment, is it?"

"Well, like you said, I'm a Ravenclaw," Gerald said, again with a lot more nerve than he felt, "I'm _always_ interested in the rhetorical answer; but I think, yes, I'd like the factual answer first." He swallowed, and then, boldly: "Did you modify my memory?"

"No," Snape said quietly, and Gerald felt such an immense flood of relief in his gut that it made his knees briefly weak, again. "I did not, and I would not; firstly, because I have little doubt that your Shield Charm — that is the spell you're readying in your pocket, yes? — would neatly deflect my efforts, and secondly, because Calista would never forgive me if she found out."

Gerald exhaled, but didn't let go of his wand, despite being given away. "Thank you for being honest," he managed, "You're correct about the Shield Charm." There was no point in denying it, especially given the spark of pride he'd felt at his former professor's acknowledgement that Gerald's would be effective against him, "Although I'm _not_ sure you're correct on that last point. Perhaps you don't fully realise how much Calista admires you. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find something she truly couldn't forgive you for."

Snape smiled thinly. "I certainly hope I never need to find out; but I can assure you, with utmost confidence, that she would not forgive me for bringing any sort of harm onto you. If you don't believe me, then perhaps _you_ don't fully realise the extent of Calista's… 'admiration'."

Gerald felt himself flush, slightly. And then, even though the question hadn't truly been asked:

"I love her," he said, stoutly and quietly; and for a moment, he almost said what he wanted, what he really wanted for he and Calista, some day; but he could see the panic in her eyes whenever Chadwick and Mira talked starting their family, and he could hear the horror in her voice, only minutes and a lifetime ago, when the idea of a wedding had been incorrectly and transiently tied to the two of _them_ , and suddenly admitting the complete truth seemed as unthinkable as telling the man that he could see Nargles.

"I don't doubt that," Snape said, quietly; he seemed to be waiting, now, for the rest of Gerald's answer, but the problem was, he _couldn't_ see Nargles, if they'd ever even existed at all.

"I suppose my intentions are simple," he said, instead, and the most heart-wrenching thing about it was that it was _true_ , it wasn't everything he wanted, but if it were all that was going to be on offer, then he would certainly take it: "I intend to be with her for as long as she loves me in return, and to make it as certain as I can that she never runs out of reasons to do so."

"And, I suppose," Snape said, biting each word off as carefully as he might separate a poisonous bloom from its harmless stem, "As long as those are your intentions, then you and I will have to maintain some manner of relationship."

Gerald nodded, a bit uncertainly, as he followed his former professor's gaze down to the sheaf of papers that still hung from his fingers.

"Keep the papers until you get what you need from them," Snape said, with a note of finality, "And try to think of this: I am not asking you to keep a secret _from_ Calista; I am asking you to keep a secret _for_ me, one that is mine more than it is hers; you will have to trust in my judgement, I suppose, that keeping it is what's best for her."

"I… I'm not sure if I agree, sir…" Gerald said, reluctantly and decidedly unsure.

"You don't need to agree," Snape said, "You merely need to trust my judgement, as I've said. I have a feeling this will not be the last time I'll need to ask you to do so."

Snape's mouth twisted, then, into a strange, not-quite-grim sort of smile. "If you think that sounds like a tall ask, my boy, try and remember that in return, I've got to trust _you_ with my daughter."

There was a strange surge in the pit of Gerald's stomach then, even though he _knew_ , of course he knew, that the phrase was almost certainly used inconsequentially, or else it had been cleverly designed to affect him precisely the way it just had, but still… _my boy_.

"Incidentally," Snape went on, "Since you did say you were interested in the answer: in the immediate aftermath of a properly-performed Memory Charm, you would feel a general sense of confusion, and a nagging feeling that there is something you've just forgotten. In the case of removal of memories by legilimency…" Snape's nostrils flared briefly, "It seems that even the most skilled practitioner will inadvertently leave traces behind. I think, in time, you would become aware that something was missing, even if you did not know quite what it was or how it had happened."

"Oh." Gerald tried to digest that knowledge, and tried not to think about precisely how Snape had come to find that out. "I… thank you for answering my question, Prof — erm — Mr. Snape."

Snape smiled thinly, and _then_ — he lifted his hand, and placed it gently on Gerald's shoulder, the arm that held the sheaf of papers, still.

"I do think it's time we got beyond that," Snape said, "After all, you are not my student any longer. You may address me as Severus, and I shall do my best to remember not to call you by your surname, as if I'm about to give you detention…" the older man smirked then, "Though I am certain I will find myself, on occasion, wishing that I still could."

Gerald inhaled sharply, and nodded, slightly ashamed to feel the return of the hopeful little surge in his gut — _my boy_ — and did his best to keep his expression neutral, or at least not pitiful.

"That seems reasonable, erm — Severus."

Severus nodded too, and lifted his hand; then he tilted his head, and briefly, he brought his hand back down to the younger man's shoulder.

"I'm certain it would interest you to know, Gerald," he said, and there was only the slightest betrayal that his tone was anything but conversational, "That a Shield Charm could easily deflect a Memory Charm, and actually, in the right hands, it would be _particularly_ effective against a singular use of legilimency." He seemed to reflect briefly, and then added: "It would fail, of course, under a continued attack, where Occlumency is the only proper defence."

A continued attack? Gerald had really only felt the uncomfortable, prickling pressure of legilimency in short bursts like what Severus had described as a _rattling at the doorknob_ — what would a _continued attack_ even feel like? He felt his nerves ringing at the thought, and he only barely managed to suppress a shudder.

Severus squeezed his shoulder briefly, and nodded towards the papers once more. Gerald blinked, and then realising what Severus was asking, he Vanished them.

"So," Severus said, "When is this… _wedding_ that you and Calista are attending?"

"It's tomorrow," Gerald said, "In the afternoon." He allowed himself a brief smile of amusement, then. "I'm planning on coming here first, under pretense of wanting to Apparate to the church together, but really because I think she'll try to 'forget' to meet me there otherwise."

"Yet another demonstration of that Ravenclaw wisdom," Severus said drily, "In that case, I'll ask that you go home tonight, so I can spend some time with Calista. I'll be returning to the castle tomorrow, I think."

"Of course," Gerald said, slightly bewildered by Severus' phrasing. Gerald _always_ went home at night; Calista never wanted him to stay with her, even though he had offered several times and even though he knew she didn't like being in the house alone. He had made the assumption that it was because Severus didn't want him there overnight, but now it sounded as if Severus thought he _was_ staying, which meant…

He tried to stop the thought, but it came, anyway: _It means she's the one that doesn't want you here._ And on its tail: _She's never going to want you to stay; just look at her reaction to the very idea of those wedding books having anything to do with you._

Gerald felt his mouth pull down, again.

"I think… I think I'm actually going to go home now," he said, still sounding remarkably casual, despite the unease in his gut and in his head. "I'll come over tomorrow, for Calista, and I'll drop her back off at home after the wedding."

He pretended not to notice Severus' quizzical look, and pretended not to realise that it meant he was almost certainly correct; it _was_ Calista who didn't want him to stay.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

It seemed like the wedding was torture for both of them. Calista spent the ceremony looking mostly at her hands in her lap, with only a few brief glances towards the front of the church where the wedding was taking place. Gerald was one of Chadwick's groomsmen, so he had to stand up at the front for much of it, and he hadn't caught her looking up at him even _once_ while he was there, as if perhaps she was afraid that this marriage thing might be catching.

When he was finally able to rejoin her, during the wedding's _second_ sermon, after Chadwick and Mira had exchanged their vows, he was almost afraid to reach for her hand. He felt a disproportionate sweep of relief when she took it at once, and twined her fingers with his.

"I'm sorry," Gerald whispered, and she looked up at him then, finally, caught somewhere between startled and uncertain.

"For what?" she whispered back.

"I don't know," he murmured quietly, ducking his head closer to hers. "For… for having to leave you, I suppose."

Calista blinked, and there it was again, for the briefest of moments — a flash of panic, the same one he had glimpsed nearly every time that anyone brought up the wedding, or _especially_ when Chadwick or Mira brought up the possibility of having children soon after it.

"I'm fine," she whispered, as her features smoothed once more, " _It's_ fine. You told me what to expect."

He nodded, but her eyes were already on her lap again. He let his observe her, for a minute. Not just the lovely profile, the delicate ear, the soft hair gathered into a loose knot at the base of her neck, the beautiful blue strapless dress that she had asked her Aunt Andromeda to help her pick out, ever since she'd learned that her Aunt Narcissa's sense of Muggle fashion was evidently out of date; he let himself observe the stiffness in her bared shoulders, the tense set of her jaw, the downturn at the corners of her mouth.

But still; there was her hand, holding on to his as tightly as she might if he were taking her on side-along Apparition, and she was trying to avoid being Splinched.

He shifted closer to her, and brought his mouth right beside her ear.

" _Tu es incroyablement belle_ ," he whispered, "Didn't I tell you that you're not supposed to upstage the bride?"

She turned to him again, quickly, and the panic was back in her eyes.

"I didn't — I'm not — Aunt Andromeda said this dress would be okay —" she started to whisper frantically, and Gerald squeezed her hand, shaking his head quickly and subtly, an attempt to reassure.

"Shh, _mon colibri_ , no, you're fine, the dress is perfect; I didn't mean it like that," he muttered, and once the panic had fled her eyes and she exhaled, he brought his mouth back to her ear.

"I was trying to flirt with you," he explained, and finally he saw a slow upturn at the corner of her mouth. She glanced at him, and he could see that, finally, she was smiling, for the first time all day.

"Are you allowed to do that at someone else's wedding?" she whispered back.

Gerald grinned. "I don't know," he murmured, "And I don't care; _tu ressembles à un rêve magnifique_."

She squeezed his hand, and grinned back — briefly, but enough to light up the dark in her face.

" _Te amo_ ," she mouthed, and then she looked back at the front of the church, where their attention was supposed to be.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

"Ow — damn," Calista muttered, yet again, when she stepped on the hem of her dress for what had to be the fifth time; but still, it was undoubtedly better than caving in to wearing the ridiculous high-heeled shoes that _both_ of her aunts had tried to press on her. Calista wondered what each of them would make of the fact that her sister had recommended almost exactly the same pair, to go with the dress that Aunt Andromeda and Tonks had helped her choose.

Gerald's arm tightened at her waist at the very instant that she stumbled, slightly, catching her so neatly that it was likely no one had even noticed her misstep. This time, though, he didn't relax his grip again, once she was steady on her feet. Instead, he kept her close, and a moment later, she felt the warmth of his mouth, along the side of her neck.

" _Mon beau colibri_ ," he murmured, against her skin, and then he carved a trail, down her neck and along her exposed shoulder.

"Are you sure you're allowed to do _that_ at someone else's wedding, too?" she muttered, only half-teasing; she didn't want to do _anything_ that might draw attention to her. This, the dancing was bad enough: she'd agreed to it only because Gerald had really looked like he wanted her to say yes, and _all right_ , a little bit because dancing with during that lesson in France had actually been nice, though she'd never admit it out loud.

It wasn't the dancing itself, of course; she was still rubbish at that, as evidenced by all the times she'd tripped on her own damn dress. It was _this_ part she liked, being close and all the corny things he whispered to her while they were close, so long as none of it was poetry.

"I don't care, remember?" Gerald said quietly. He released her hand, bringing his fingers up to where his mouth had just been, at her shoulder, and then up along her neck, the reverse of his earlier path. "And besides, _tu es trop belle, je ne peux pas résister_."

" _Je veux t'embrasser_ ," Calista muttered, before she had a chance to think better of it. Gerald grinned, and put his mouth right by her ear.

Mira was coming towards the dance floor now, magnificently beautiful in her white gown, but she couldn't see her new husband Chadwick anywhere. She wondered if that were a bad sign, if it meant the part she was _really_ afraid for was coming

" _Rappelle-toi mon colibri, je ne peux pas résister_ ," Gerald said. His voice and his breath were soft and warm at her ear, but she hardly heard him, suddenly, hardly felt his breath or even his arm at her waist; instead, she felt herself stiffen with dread, and her heart start to race with the need to be anywhere but where she was —

 _What's wrong with you?_ She asked herself, madly, _You're afraid of bloody_ flowers _now?_

But she _was_ ; or at least, she was afraid of the flowers that Mira was holding, as she stood at the edge of the dance floor, smiling brilliantly.

"Come on, ladies, you know what time it is," she was teasing the crowd, and beckoning for the younger women to come forward — she was looking at her friends, her bridesmaids, but Calista knew Mira's eyes would seek her out soon, too, if she didn't get _far_ away, and quickly. She had made a joke about aiming for her with her bouquet, the last time she and Gerald had been to Chadwick's for dinner, and she hadn't even been able to _look_ at Gerald, for fear of whatever awful look might be on his face.

"Calista?" Gerald frowned. "What's wrong?"

"I just — erm, I have to —"

"Calista!" _Fuck._ Mira was motioning her over, smiling as if she _weren't_ actively plotting Calista's death by mortification. "Come here, love, or you're going to miss your chance."

Calista shook her head rapidly, hating the sea of glances that shot her way when Mira called out to her, and _especially_ hating the way that she felt Gerald's arms fall away from her.

Mira laughed and shrugged; a few others, mostly her friends and Chadwick's joined her. And then, she turned her back to the crowd and threw the bundle of flowers. Her friends scrambled to retrieve them for a moment; one of them emerged victorious, holding the bouquet aloft with a massive grin, while Calista tried to determine if it would be worse to Disapparate in front of a crowd of guests that contained Muggles, or to stay where she was.

"Is it really so terrible to you?" she heard, in a voice that was so low and strained that it took her a moment to place it as Gerald's. When she looked over at him, he had distanced himself almost an arm's length away, and _Merlin help her_ , his face was just as awful as she'd imagined it would be. "Even just the _idea_?"

"Of course it's terrible," she snapped, "it's — I — I don't know why she thought I would want — I _don't_ , just so you know, don't worry."

"Yes, I know," Gerald said, "You've been making it incredibly clear for basically as long as I've known you."

"Good," she said, "I don't want you to think that I want — that I would _expect_ … _that_."

"Why?" he asked, stepping closer, and his voice was still strained, as if he didn't believe that she meant what she'd said, as if he were afraid that someday, she'd want him to… to… _well_. She didn't.

"Why are you so horrified at the idea of ever —" Gerald swallowed, and he seemed to steel himself to push on, "Of weddings and… things?"

Calista blinked, incredulous. "You're really going to ask me that _here_?" she said, and then she couldn't help but look back to the dance floor, where Mira and Chadwick were dancing together, now; she thought that Mira was exactly what a bride should be, or exactly what they all looked like in all the pictures in Gerald's books, anyway, and it was hard to think how she could be any _more_ different from herself.

"I… yes, I suppose I am," Gerald said, doggedly, but he did at least move further from the dance floor, close to a wall, in a spot where they wouldn't be overheard easily. "I want to understand."

"Mira looks happy," Calista said, in a quiet rush. She could feel her cheeks heating up, and not at all in the way they ordinarily did around Gerald. "She looks like she _deserves_ to be happy. She looks like she's got loads of sisters just as pretty as she is, and she's never had trouble with a Patronus Charm —"

"Calista, what does _any_ of that have to do with —"

"She looks like she has two parents that _both_ care about her, and, oh, who've never even thought about murdering anyone," she went on, not quite able to stop now that she'd started, and feeling a distinctly unpleasant burning threat behind her eyes, "And like no one from her family's ever been disowned _or_ imprisoned. I bet there are pictures of her up on her grandparents' walls and — and she's always had birthday parties, and she _never_ wakes up screaming like a psycho in the middle of the night —"

"Calista. _Mon cœur_ …"

"And that's fine," Calista finished, "I'm glad she has all those things, but that's who weddings and — and _marriage_ and families and _things_ are for, they're for girls like Mira, and — and Olivia Avril and Daisy Spratt, and even Amelia, but they're not for _girls like me_. And I know that; I've always known that. So you don't need to worry — I _know_ it, all right?"

For a moment, Gerald was devastatingly silent; and then…

"That's why?" his voice was so soft she had to strain to hear it, "Calista, that's…"

"Awful. I know. But it's —"

"Not true," he said, interrupting suddenly and stoutly. "Calista, you're the most wonderful, clever, strong, and _beautiful_ woman I know, and those things, _all of those things_ — you must know that you deserve them all just as much as Mira or Amelia or anyone else."

She blinked. And at last, she dared to look up at his face, and he looked so sweet and so _sincere_ , and _Merlin's' beard_ , in that blue button-up shirt and darker blazer that he'd worn as part of Chadwick's wedding part, he was _so goddamn cute_ —

"If you want them, I mean," he added, a bit uncertainly, "I mean — you deserve whatever you want. Someday. When you want it."

"Huh?" She felt her mouth twitch, and she wasn't even certain if it would be a smile or a frown — he'd said something wonderful, but then he sounded like perhaps he was trying to qualify it, or take it back, or — _fuck_ , perhaps he just wanted to be certain that she didn't dare to ever want any of those things from _him_ , with _him_ —

"Give me a moment," Gerald said suddenly, "Wait here, please."

Before she had a chance to decide exactly what he was saying, he left her; he wove his way through the couples on the dance floor. She saw him walk up to one of Mira's friends, the woman who had caught the wedding bouquet. He said something to her, a few sentences perhaps, and then, inexplicably, the young woman grinned and separated a few of the blooms out and handed them to him.

He strode back towards her, and then, when he was a step away, he stopped, warm brown eyes fixed on her face with that same adorable, sweet sincerity.

"I'd throw them behind my back," Gerald said, "But honestly, I'm not in the least bit athletically inclined, and I'm sure they'd only end up on the ground. So."

And _then_ , he took her hand, and he dropped down on _one fucking knee_ , and he held the small bundle of stems out to her.

" _Mon beau colibri_ ," he said, " _Mon cœur;_ I hope you'll accept these flowers as the very smallest, and very _first_ token that you really do deserve the world, though for now I suppose you'll have to settle for my heart." He paused, and tilted his head thoughtfully. "And these flowers, of course."

"Gerald — I —" she blinked against the prickling heat of tears but her whole _face_ was hot, and undoubtedly red, and… "You have to get up. People are going to notice and they're going to think you're — and you're _definitely_ not supposed to do that at someone else's wedding!"

He flushed then too, and grinned sheepishly, pulling himself back to his feet. He kept his hold on her hand, and once he was level with her again, lifted it to his mouth and pressed a kiss against her fingers, pressing the small cluster of stems into her other hand.

"Don't be silly, _mon cœur_ ; I think anyone who knows me would realise that if I _were_ going to propose marriage, I would do something far grander and more romantic. Ah, and — rhetorically speaking, of course — in the interest of _not_ being flayed alive by the father of my beloved, I suppose I would probably wait until we'd been dating a bit longer than a year and a half."

Calista felt herself pulling in a grateful gulp of air; _Merlin_ , her face was hot, and… and, oh, it wasn't just her face.

"Now you're the one being silly," she muttered, trying her best to bring her expression, at least, under control. "He wouldn't — my father wouldn't flay you, he'd _poison_ you."

"Well, yes," Gerald agreed, "I suppose _your father_ would — but I was speaking rhetorically, remember?"

"Oh. Right. Of course."

Gerald's cheeks were very pink, and the contrast against the blue of his collar — it made her grin, suddenly, and she darted forward, and kissed him on the mouth. She _expected_ it to be a quick, chaste sort of kiss, but then his arms came around her again, snug and secure like earlier, when they'd been dancing, and then _his_ mouth left hers to trail a line of kisses along her jaw all the way to her _goddamn ear_ , and she heard herself say perhaps the very _last_ thing she'd expected to:

"Do you have to leave, after you drop me off?" she asked, "I mean, we _do_ both have to go to London in the morning, and — well, it might be easier to go together, and —"

Gerald paused, lifting his mouth briefly away from her ear. "Are you… are you asking me if I want to spend the night at your house?"

Calista felt her cheeks light up again.

"Erm. Maybe. Rhetorically speaking, of course."

"Of course I do," he said, and there was the flutter of his warm breath at her ear again, " _Je veux te serrer de près, et t'embrasser, et je veux dire des choses qui te fera rougir_."

"I… I want all of that, too," Calista said quietly, and as she said it, she realised that she meant _all_ of it, and that despite herself she was glad she had finally offered for him to stay. "And I want…"

She swallowed, and now it was her turn to put her mouth near _his_ ear.

" _Je veux te toucher_ ," she whispered, " _Omnis pars vestrum_." _Every part of you._

She swallowed, and she could feel another rush of warm breath; but interestingly, there was _another_ physical reaction on his part that she was suddenly acutely aware of, as close as they were…

She bit back a tiny, slightly victorious grin, and then, still very quietly: "Oh. And that's _not_ rhetorical."

" _Mon beau colibri… je… je t'aime, bien sûr je viendr —_ erm — _je resterai_."

She nodded, and then she had a brilliant idea. She separated one of the flowers from the small bunch he'd given her, and she held it up, between them, making certain his eyes fell on the blossom, and then, with the most suggestive grin she could muster, she set it carefully in the pocket of his shirt.

" _Non est vere rhetoricus, neque,"_ she said, _That's not really rhetorical, either._

" _Mon cœur_ …" he stammered, but that wasn't really the body part that it seemed she was having the most effect on, currently…

She smiled crookedly, forcing herself to seem certain and confident, mostly because his reaction to it, all the way up to his red face and hopeful, eager gaze was enough to make her feel like she really _was_ all of the things he'd called her earlier, like perhaps she _did_ have the right to look at him in his adorable wedding blazer and imagine things she didn't think she was supposed to have.

"Wow," she said, inwardly marveling at the evenness of her tone, the receding blush in her face, and _really_ at all the strange sorts of things it turned out Occlumency could be used for, "You weren't kidding; you really _do_ like girls speaking to you in Latin, don't you?"

Gerald exhaled again, and then: "Calista, _mon cœur_ , don't you recall that I promised that… that when we got to this discussion that there _would_ be poetry?"

"Honestly? I was sort of hoping you'd forget," she said, even though _of course_ she goddamn wanted to hear it…

Gerald managed a small, nervous grin himself, almost as if he rather _knew_ she did, and then:

" _Mon colibri, je veux toucher chaque part de toi qui tu dévoiles; Et puis, je veux te donner plaisir et te montrer les étoiles_."

It took her a minute to translate, but once she _did_ …

"Merlin's blood. I'm _never_ going to beat you at flirting, am I?"

"Not if I can help it," Gerald said, " _Mais s'il te plait mon amour, essayes toujours._ "

"For the love of — was that _more_ bloody poetry?"

Gerald merely grinned wider; and Calista wondered how much longer they had to stay here to be polite, before she could take him home.

* * *

 ** _(A/N:_** _Sorry for the delay in posting this chapter - hopefully the reveal, or the cute Gerald/Sev convo, or at the very least the fluff, made it worth the wait ^_^)_


	9. Giving Thanks

**9\. Giving Thanks**

After Calista returned from the washroom, clean and dressed once more, Gerald murmured his intention to do the same; he had already hurried back into his clothes, which Calista might have found slightly disappointing if she hadn't been able to see the top bit of his underwear where he'd tucked his shirt in haphazardly, and then her face had spread, unbidden, into a grin.

"You've got _books_ on them!" she pointed out, gleefully, "How did I not notice that before?"

Gerald flushed, and immediately pulled his trousers higher, fastening them over the offending fabric. "Erm — because I tried extremely hard to make sure you didn't. I — I don't usually wear these, Mum got them for me ages ago as a joke, but nothing else was clean and I didn't really expect — uh —"

"I love them."

Gerald blinked, incredulously. "You've _got_ to be having me on, they're ridiculous —"

She shook her head stubbornly, still grinning. "They're perfect, and I can't _believe_ you didn't show me earlier; think of all the corny jokes we could have made… you could've told me you brought a book over you wanted me to look at —"

"You're mad," he said, but she could her a hint of amusement or admiration, despite his reddened face.

"Or," Calista said, "I could have asked you to show me the index…"

Gerald practically choked. "I — erm — Merlin, I wasn't prepared for this. Can you pretend I've just said something devastatingly clever and appropriately flirtatious, please?"

Calista bit her lip, but she suspected that it really did nothing to diminish her teasing grin. " _En français, bien sûr?"_

"Erm — yes." Gerald nodded weakly, "I promise I'll work on something clever for next time —" and then, he seemed to catch himself and he added, hastily: "Erm — that is, I mean — if you want — if there is — argh, I better just go wash up…"

"Okay," Calista said, and then as he lifted the trapdoor to go downstairs, still blushing like mad, she added: "Next time, I suppose we'll be reading Chapter Two."

Gerald sputtered, and just when she thought she'd won:

"You thought this was the first — what book have you ever read where the climax happens in the first chapter?"

Now, it was Calista who was furiously red. "Merlin's blood," she muttered, "I'm not letting you win _again_."

"I think perhaps I already have, _mon cœur_."

"Well," Calista managed, "I suppose we'll have to read the sequel to find out for certain, won't we?"

Gerald blinked, and smiled hopefully. "Sequel? I think I'd like — Oh! Wait, I've got something better than just a sequel."

" _Better?_ " Merlin, how could _that_ be possible?

"Calista. Do you remember the Muggle novels I picked out for you in that bookshop in Marseille?"

"Yes…"

"Good," he said, and his smile shifted wider, "Because I think we both agree the most disappointing part of a good book is when it ends — _mon colibri_ , shall we call our reading exercise 'The Neverending Story'?"

It was Calista's turn to blink, then, and to smile. "Oh. I thought perhaps you were going to suggest we call it 'Great Expectations'.

"Well, I must admit, that rather works, too…"

For a moment, they mirrored each other's goofy, slightly lovestruck grins; and then, Gerald mumbled something about washing up again, and finally disappeared down the trapdoor.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

While Gerald was downstairs, Calista tidied her room quickly, picking her discarded dress up off the floor and using magic to change her sheets and make the bed. She could hear faintly, the sound of water running just below her when she went to the far end of the room near the trapdoor to dry her hair in the small mirror that hung there; a few passes with a Steaming Spell and it was good enough.

She could still hear the water running downstairs, so she chose a book at random off one of her shelves, and settled down on her bed; but it was a ruse, of _course_ it was a ruse. How could she think of anything just now, besides what she and Gerald had just _done_ in this bed?

Her cheeks — and maybe a few other parts — lit up instantly when she thought about that. She had been nervous at first, but he had been too, and they'd both admitted that right up front; after that, it had seemed natural to talk each other through what they were doing — to say what felt good and what didn't, and _of course_ there had been some multilingual flirting and encouragement…

Calista heard an embarrassing sigh, and an instant later, when she remembered that Gerald was still downstairs and that sound had been _her_ , she scowled half-heartedly at herself… but Merlin, if she'd ever had a _reason_ to sigh like that, it had been tonight. It had been fascinating to explore Gerald's body in ways she had only started to before but had _thought_ about long enough; to touch him and to see his eyes darken and hear his breath catch, and it had seemed like the most exciting thing she had done in a long time; until, of course, he'd coaxed her out of her dress and dedicated himself to returning the favour, and then she'd forgotten to compare it to anything else. His hands were warm and slow and gentle, and every time he wanted to move them somewhere new, he would look to her, for a nod or a _yes_ before proceeding.

Calista had felt all sorts of things that were all-encompassing before, things that seemed to reach beyond the surface of her skin; she'd felt pain so deep it reached her bones, and she'd felt anger and fear slipping around in her gut and in her veins; but until that September evening, when Gerald's careful fingers had found a particular spot, she had never felt anything _good_ that overtook her entire body quite like _that_. It was like his mouth on her ear a hundred times over, and it made every single part of her, from her skin to her blood to her _goddamn brain_ happy; and by the time Gerald had breathlessly asked her for one final _yes_ , she wasn't certain that she could even remember any other words.

She had read that some small amount of pain or discomfort was almost inevitable, but it seemed that Gerald had read all the same books, because it was clear that he was trying his best to be certain that wasn't so; he'd shifted his touch between ensuring she was ready and _that spot_ , and he had been slow and careful, still, to the very end, and although the sensation had been somewhat uncomfortable at first and certainly very _different_ , she wouldn't really say that it had been painful, although she supposed she did feel slightly tender now, after the fact.

She'd also read that a lot of girls were afraid, after their first time, that things in the relationship would change, that having sex would somehow replace the other manifestations of physical affection they were used to, but how could she be afraid of that, when Gerald had been so _Gerald_ all the way through? Even if she _had_ been worried about that, it would have been allayed in the moments after, when Gerald had lifted her hand to his mouth in a practised gesture, and then leaned close to murmur ' _je t'aime, mon colibri'_ into the shell of her ear.

Distantly, Calista became aware of light footsteps below, and then she could hear Gerald climbing the ladder again. Hastily, she picked up her book, hoping to hide her obviously red face behind its pages.

"Couldn't put it down, eh?" Gerald said, once he'd come up; Calista blinked, momentarily confused, and _then_ she noticed the title of the book she'd chosen at random, the one that she was now holding up in front of her face.

 _The Neverending Story._

She scowled. Merlin's blood, she'd practically _handed_ him that round.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista shifted experimentally, for perhaps the fourth or fifth time in an hour; this time, finally, there was no responding shift or twitch from Gerald, no readjustment of his arms around her, no murmured endearment that told her that he was still awake, or close to it. This time, there was only a small, contented sort of exhale, and when she lifted her head slightly off her pillow to look at him, he was mercifully, peacefully asleep.

It had been a long and obviously eventful day, and the idea of joining him in that sleep was incredibly tempting, but there was no guarantee that she would be able to affect the same peace; in fact, it seemed to Calista that her worst nightmares often came just when she was starting to feel that she was doing all right, as if somehow her mother could sense it.

In France, she'd managed, on that last night, to fall asleep with him, to curl into him and tuck her head under his chin and drift into a relatively dreamless sleep; but then, she had still been filled with the warm buzz of wine, and _that_ wasn't a viable long-term solution. She only had to think about Gerald's father, or her own _father's_ father, to be properly disillusioned.

She tried to think of things that would keep her awake: the research she was doing for the Charms Committee, her ongoing rivalries at St. Mungo's, the vague unease that came with knowing Mad-Eye Moody was at Hogwarts, undoubtedly harassing her father, though he'd unconvincingly glossed over her fears when she'd asked; but _still_ , despite all of that, sleep pulled at her, and it wasn't long before she'd started to drift along.

The pull of it was like a tide, and the instant it washed over her face, she started awake; she thought she might have seen a flash of silver, the tug of something or someone tugging her down — it took her the better part of a minute to realise that the silver was only moonlight, and the weight was only Gerald's arm across her.

 _Stay awake_ , she told herself, and she counted up all the reasons she ought to: all of her earlier fears, the vivid dreams that had already started to whisper to her in that brief moment where she'd let herself start to go under, the fact that Yellow was still downstairs somewhere, instead of curled up on Calista's pillow in the exact spot that Gerald's head now occupied — but she was _tired_ , and while none of that seemed sufficient to keep her awake, she knew what _would_.

Carefully, she wriggled free from Gerald's arm; he made a soft sound and she felt his fingers twitch, and so she hurriedly balled up her comforter and stuck that where she'd been, hoping that would be a sufficient substitute to keep him from waking up and realising she'd gone.

She didn't give herself much time to find out if it had worked; instead, she tiptoed across the wooden floor, still clad in her nightdress that looked the most like regular clothing — the one, in fact, that she had worn on the night that she had gone with her father to the hospital wing at Hogwarts, to administer her Mandrake Draught to Penny and the other basilisk victims; the one she'd been wearing during that long, exhausting night, and the ensuing middle-of-the night feast: the one that she'd had on when she and Gerald had walked to that feast, separate from everyone else in one of their first brief moments alone, and they'd held hands the entire time, and he'd made her blush _again_ by saying sweet things that made her feel like she was suddenly more than she really was.

She treasured that moment, along with many other beautiful moments, as things that she'd managed, somehow, to steal: no matter how much Severus, or Gerald, or Daisy, or _anyone_ told her that she deserved things like sunlight and yellow flowers, there was always the past, waiting with ready fingers to snatch her back into the shadows, where she had been born and where she was still sometimes hard-pressed to believe she wasn't destined to _stay_.

She lifted the trapdoor, as quietly as she could. She thought she heard Gerald stirring again, so she disappeared down it as quickly and softly as possible, pulling it closed slowly, so it wouldn't make a sound, and then she took both the ladder and the staircase down to the ground level of the quiet, darkened little house, straight to the same old friend that had helped her through so many other nights.

She busied herself at the coffeepot, going through the motions as if she'd done them a thousand times, and she easily _had_. A few things had changed: this kitchen was somewhere between the size of the _first_ kitchen she'd ever done this in and the one she'd done it in most often, and it had been quite some time since she'd had to lift a chair soundlessly over to reach the countertop.

She reflected on the difference between those first two kitchens, now, as she waited for the comforting, tell-tale aroma of coffee to fill the air. The first one had been cavernous and shadowy even in the daylight, and every sound and every pool of darkness had filled her with terror, for _all_ of them could be her mother stirring, and Calista knew very well what happened to _naughty little girls that disobeyed their mothers_.

The fear of being caught by her mother had never stopped her from venturing into the kitchen at night, though; as strange as it might seem, sometimes the possibility of her mother catching her out of bed in _reality_ was less frightening than the certainty of her spectre in her dreams. Perhaps, she reflected now, in the kitchen of her father's childhood home, it was because the dreams meant that Bellatrix was inside her head, while in that cavernous kitchen she had only been able to touch her from the outside.

The tiny, cramped kitchen in the castle dungeon had frightened her even more than the first one, in the beginning, because there weren't as many places to hide. She remembered her very first night there, in that unfamiliar place; she remembered discovering where the 'strange, black-eyed man' had kept his coffeepot, and she remembered an imagined sound right after its discovery that had sent her scurrying under the table, so afraid of who he was and what he might do to her if he caught her there, that she'd stayed huddled underneath it for at least an hour, accompanied by nothing but the rapid, panicked beating of her own little heart, and perhaps a few spiders.

And then, gradually — like a seed sprouted into one of the pretty yellow flowers she'd glimpsed, that first time, on the castle lawn — that kitchen had started to feel safe, and secure, and she didn't _need_ to hide when she was there, and the only thing that had made it feel even safer and even more like home was the presence of that same black-eyed man across the little table, and perhaps the smooth, curved warmth of a mug nestled into her palm.

She had one of those things, now, and she _even_ had the table. She sat down at it, curling her fingers around the mug, and she took the first beautiful, scalding sip, preparing herself for the familiar vigil against sleep, against dreams.

Distantly, she heard the creaking of a floorboard, and her ears perked, her heart picked up speed — there were some instincts that seemed to come to life even still, even _now_ , and they were always worse in the dark. She felt herself tense, realised belatedly that she'd gone and left her wand upstairs like a complete _fucking idiot_. She lifted her fingers, preparing her Freezing Charm —

And then, all at once, she remembered _who_ she'd left her wand behind with, and her shoulders and her fingers relaxed, when she recognised Gerald's familiar form in the kitchen doorway, and _goddamn it he was wearing the same pajamas from that night, too._ They'd stopped briefly at his house on the way to hers, so that he could get a few things he'd need that night and to get ready for work in the morning, and she hadn't even realised earlier that those were the nightclothes he'd brought.

" _Mon colibri_ ," Gerald ventured quietly, from his spot at the very edge of the room, "Is everything all right?"

"I just… I can't sleep," Calista managed; she took another sip of coffee, and she expected Gerald to slip closer, but he stayed where he was. A soft frown appeared in the shadows of his face.

" I don't imagine that coffee is going to help you with that particular problem," he observed.

"Very astute," Calista replied, a bit drily, and she wasn't quite sure if she was chagrined or amused to recognise her father's tone coming out of her own mouth, "All right, then, I'll change my answer: I don't _want_ to fall asleep."

Gerald nodded slowly, and she heard him take a breath, and then: "I… erm, I suppose that leads me back to my first question, then: is everything all right?"

She couldn't bring herself to respond, because everything _should_ have been all right, but the dark of night had, once again, brought a weight of its own against her, and instead of answering, she simply _shrugged_ , half-intending to shrug the darkness away with it; but of course, that never worked.

"Do you want…" Gerald sighed softly, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," she said, immediately, instinctively; and then she felt herself flush, and she frowned. "Yes. I mean — no, I don't."

She saw the shadows shifting in his face — he might have been frowning, or furrowing his brow, but it was hard to tell in the dark, and at such a distance.

"That wasn't particularly convincing," he said, "Are you _certain_ that you don't want to talk?"

Calista hunched her shoulders, a bit defensively.

"I'm fine," she said, "And it's late, and you have to work tomorrow, and I certainly don't expect you to stay up all night with me."

"What if I want to stay up with you?"

"Trust me, you don't. It's not a figure of speech; I'm really going to sit here until it's light out, and even though I'll be exhausted and miserable tomorrow, I'll still make it through the day; I don't think you would. You haven't got as much practise as I do."

"I've got some," Gerald said, and there was an acute sadness in his voice that made Calista grip her mug tighter, and nod towards the empty chair closest to her; partly because she wanted him near, and partly because the one he was standing beside was her father's, and for some inexplicable reason, she didn't want him _there_.

"You might as well sit," she said, "I know you don't want coffee, but I can make you some tea, if you want…"

Gerald took the offered seat, but he shook his head at the latter portion of her offer. "It's funny," he said, "I've never met anyone else who can make the word 'tea' sound blasphemous. It's as if you're offering me a steaming cup of dismembered frogs, or something."

Despite herself, Calista felt the little spark of a grin playing at the corners of her mouth.

"Well, it's tea," she pointed out, "That's what it tastes like."

"And somehow that cup of liquid ash is preferable?"

"Gerald," Calista said, "It's a testament to how much I love you that I'm willing to overlook that particular comment; but I can't promise I'd stand for it a second time…"

Gerald mirrored her grin, just as small and weak. "I know something's wrong," he said, "But I still can't help but smile when you say that — especially casually, like that, like… like it's just a fact."

Calista raised her brow. "What, that I won't stand for you insulting coffee a second time? That _is_ a fact."

Gerald's smile faltered slightly, and Calista rolled her eyes.

"You silly hippogriff," she groused, "Of _course_ the other thing is a fact, too; of course I love you. You'd think that much would be obvious, after — erm, you know."

She felt another flash of heat in her cheeks, and at the memory, somewhere _else_. And the, Gerald was reaching for her hand, intent on pulling her fingers away from the radiating warmth of her mug; at first, she hesitated, but it turned out that the warmth of his fingers was just as comforting. She let him take one of her hands, and shifted the mug to the other.

"Is that what's wrong?" Gerald ventured, "I didn't — I mean — you're not hurt after all, are you? Or having second thoughts, or…?"

"No," she said, "It's nothing to do with that." She frowned. "Anyway, wouldn't it be a bit late now, if I _did_ have second thoughts?"

"I don't know," Gerald admitted, "But if you were — if you are — we could… we could decide not to do that again, for awhile."

"Well, let's not close the book just yet," Calista said, and she finally met his gaze again, offering a small, half-hearted sort of grin. "I never said I wanted _that_."

"Well, I just…" Gerald seemed to be struggling not to mirror her grin again; she could see him schooling his face into something serious. "I just want to make sure you know that would be okay if… if you —"

"I know," she said, interrupting him, "You don't even have to say it."

"Good." Gerald frowned, and leaned forward slightly. "If it isn't that, then…" He squeezed her hand sympathetically, "Were you having a nightmare?"

"No," she said, immediately, but she could feel his eyes on her, and it wasn't that she _couldn't_ lie to him; she found that she really didn't want to. "I just… I think maybe I was _going_ to, and I…"

"You don't want to," Gerald finished. Calista scowled defensively.

"Well, _obviously._ "

Gerald blinked, and some expression crossed his face too quickly for her to read — or perhaps she didn't _want_ to read it — and then he exhaled, and with remarkable patience:

"Is there anything that helps you to not have a nightmare?"

"Yeah," Calista said, nodding with her chin towards her left hand, whose fingers were still curled possessively around the mug of coffee, "Not sleeping."

"Right," Gerald said, "I meant something _realistic_. Like… like thinking of something that makes you happy, or having a light on, or something…"

"None of that is guaranteed to work," Calista said, a bit moodily, "So staying awake is the only 'realistic' option, to make sure it doesn't happen."

Gerald blinked again, and then:

"Okay. Calista, I'm trying to be kind, but you've got to understand that's not an option —"

"Since when?" she snapped, not even certain why she was taking her prickly feelings out on him; because he was _there_ , she supposed, and because her father wasn't…

"Honestly?" Gerald swallowed. "I hope you're just being stubborn and you're not serious, but in case you are — depriving yourself of sleep was never a _good_ option, but it's not an option at all since you took the job at St. Mungo's. What if you measure something incorrectly, or forget an ingredient, because you're exhausted from staying awake all night?"

"I won't. I never make mistakes with potions, no matter how tired I am."

"Calista!" Gerald looked mildly alarmed, now. "You can't think that way! This isn't just about — about getting an 'O' anymore. If something does go wrong, you could seriously hurt someone or —" he swallowed, "Or worse."

Calista scowled, and yanked her hand from his, to wrap both around her mug.

"Obviously, I _know that_ ," she snarled, "I was just — I'm just —"

She couldn't finish the sentence, because the truth of what she was doing was right in front of her, in front of both of them; it was in her hands, branding them with its warmth, and somehow that usually comforting sensation wasn't enough to combat the sinking, heavy feeling of guilt that was invading her gut, and the back of her mind.

Gerald was right; she _knew_ Gerald was right, and yet…

"Go back upstairs," she told Gerald, "I'll be up in a few minutes."

Gerald frowned, but he rose dutifully. He pushed his chair in, and came to her shoulder, and he leaned over and kissed her forehead, just above her eye, and _then —_

He reached over, and plucked the mug from her fingers, gently unwrapping them where they stubbornly clung, until he had successfully wrested it from her, and set it behind him on the countertop.

"Come on, _mon colibri têtu_ ," he said, steadily, over her protests, "I think we both know you had no intention of following me up; we'll go together."

Calista grumbled half-heartedly, but he was right _again_ ; she sighed and scowled, but grudgingly rose from her own chair, and allowed him to lead her back the way she'd come, through the little kitchen and across the darkened sitting-room, upstairs and upstairs again.

It wasn't until they were back in her room, and she passed beneath the silvery moonlight streaming down from the skylight, that she voiced what she was _really_ afraid of, above everything else:

"It's supposed to be better," she said, voice small, "All her spells are gone; I can cast a Patronus again; I've even told you about the — the cuts and _all_ of it. So why is she still _here_ , inside me, whenever I fall asleep?"

Gerald sighed, and after a moment, she gave up on any sort of reply; but then, he couldn't have an answer, so what did she really expect him to say? She slipped back into her bed, pushing her decoy comforter down to the foot — it was still too warm to need it — and looked up at the ceiling, while Gerald's warm weight settled beside her.

She heard the soft clatter of his glasses, as he set them down on the table beside her bed, and then she felt him pulling her close. Part of her wanted to tear away, out of fear, or stubbornness, or spite, or _honestly,_ maybe just to see how far she could push him before he'd stop coming back — but then, she saw a flash of memory, from hours and also ages ago:

' _Mon beau colibri; mon cœur',_ he had said, looking up at her, and it had taken a moment for her to place the significance of his stance, one knee bent and she'd known it wasn't really _that_ , they were too young and it was too soon and she was still too afraid for _that_ , but it had really seemed as if he were trying to tell her that _that_ wasn't impossible, after all.

With a massive effort, Calista silenced the part of her that wanted to push him away; hadn't she learned, after all of their conversations, and all of the push-and-pull with her father, and losing and recovering her Patronus and _everything_ , that there were things she could cling to that felt so much better than distance?

Instead of pulling away, Calista decided to listen to the part of her that _wanted_ instead of _feared_ : the part of her that had _wanted_ , so many years ago, to hear about unicorns from a tatty old book; that had _wanted_ to believe the man with black eyes who told her she was safe; that had _wanted_ something she was afraid to even name when she'd looked at Gerald in his fancy Muggle suit, holding those flowers out to her.

Calista snuggled close to Gerald, tucking her head underneath his chin, and she let her eyes drift shut, and she tried to build a wall in her mind against the things that hurt; but who could build a wall that would keep out _ghosts_?

And then, just as she had nearly drifted to sleep, Gerald finally answered her question.

"I don't know, _mon colibri,_ " he said, very quietly, into the crown of her hair, "I don't know why they can still get to us."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

"This bread pudding is vile," Amelia announced, dropping her spoon into it with enough force to send bits of custard flying through the air. "It tastes like poison — oi, do you think that's the plan? Poison people to drum up business for your ward?"

"I doubt it," Calista said, absently; she was having a hard time caring about Amelia's opinion of the hospital cafeteria's bread pudding, when she still had to get through the rest of her workday _and then_ a dinner with Uncle Lucius and Aunt Narcissa. She'd spoken with Narcissa a few times, but she'd done a grand job of avoiding her uncle ever since his donation to her ward at St. Mungo's — at least, until _now_ , she had.

"Maybe your uncle asked them to do it, so you can get a bonus for curing them all —"

"Fuck off, Amelia."

Amelia grinned. "Maybe _you_ should be doing a bit more fucking off, eh? 'Cause it seems your good mood from last weekend is wearing off —"

"Shh! Merlin's blood, what is _wrong_ with you?"

Amelia shrugged. "Got your attention, didn't I?" She lifted her spoon from her pudding again and took an experimental sniff, then wrinkled up her nose, and shook her head.

"Argh — it even _smells_ like arse — so all right then, Snapelet, what's all the doom-and-gloom for _this_ time?"

"Don't _call_ me that — have you been talking to Kim Avery again?"

Amelia nodded. "Yup," she said matter-of-factly, "I've been asking her to write me about all the interesting curses she sees. Reckon I'm going to ask her to help me get into Gringotts when my internship here is done. Breaking curses sounds _way_ more interesting than healing blokes who accidentally grew their toenails too long."

"Oh." Calista frowned. "So you… you won't be here anymore, then?"

"Well, I've still got almost four months left on this bloody internship, but after that, I hope not. No offense, but this place is _boring_ — except for that one lady, there hasn't even really been any blood."

Calista suppressed a shudder, and scowled down at her lunch; she hadn't gone in, thankfully, for the arse-pudding; she had a plate of tepid, anaemic-looking chicken, instead.

"Don't worry," Amelia chirped, "I'm sure that Kyle fellow will keep you company at lunch time."

Calista's scowl deepened. "And miss the opportunity to hide my tools when I'm gone? I doubt it."

"He's still doing that?"

"Yes; at least now he _finds_ them, too; they always seem to end up in his pocket, which he pretends to be surprised by, and I pretend I'm not contemplating which poison will give him the slowest and most agonising death; it's a fun time."

"Sounds like it," Amelia commented, and then: "He knows about Gerry, right?"

Calista blinked. "What? I don't know, probably not. Why would I tell that pain in the arse _anything_ about my personal life?"

"Erm." Amelia dropped her spoon into her pudding again with another nauseating _splat_. "Do you _seriously_ not understand why I'm asking that?"

"I'm sure you think you're helping," Calista said, "But I don't need to have Gerald, or my cousin, _or my uncle_ —" here, Calista couldn't quite suppress a fierce little growl, " — Or _anyone else_ talk to him. I can handle it."

She supposed it was the shock of Amelia's plan to leave the hospital that made her add, snappishly: "And _you_ can mind your own business, by the way."

Amelia sniffed, and rose to her feet. She snatched the offending pudding up with such force that Calista was almost afraid Amelia was going to chuck it at her head.

"Fine," Amelia snarled, in precisely the same tone Calista had been using, "Do me a favour and owl me when you decide to stop being such a bitch."

 _Ah, shit._ Calista frowned, and leapt to her own feet, too. "I'm sorry," she said, "I didn't mean — I'm just… I have to go to my Aunt and Uncle's tonight and —"

"You know what?" Amelia interrupted, "I don't care _why_ you're being a bitch, and why Penny's being one, and why Percy's being such a sanctimonious twat all of a sudden — I just want all of you to _stop_."

"I'm sorry," Calista said again, crossing the distance between herself and her best friend, "I was… honestly, I think I just got a bit jealous about you writing to Kim and, erm, basically planning to leave me behind and…" she shrugged, and trailed off, but Amelia was already softening.

"You're jealous about _that_?" Amelia said, "And you actually told me the _truth_ about it, instead of snarling at me again?"

"Erm. Evidently."

"Wow. Getting laid really _did_ do wonders for you —"

" _Amelia!_ "

Amelia flashed a grin. "Okay, but the evidence is overwhelming; and by the way, you berk, I'm not _leaving you behind_ , I just won't be here for lunch in a few months. Don't worry, I'll still be up your arse every weekend."

Calista blinked. She coughed, and then she managed a small smile, and: "Not literally, I hope."

Amelia's grin widened, and she went to fling her arm around Calista —

"Argh! Watch the pudding!" She had just gotten a whiff of it, and if it were possible, it smelled even _worse_ than Amelia had described.

"Right — sorry — it's just, I'm so proud of you, for making a dirty joke!"

Calista felt herself flush. "I told you, I… erm, I made a few, with Gerald…"

Amelia's brow went up. "No, you didn't; you said a bunch of corny rubbish about books."

"Well, yes, but there were… erm, you know… innuendos."

Amelia snorted. "If you can call them that; I mean, Merlin's' balls, you could've at _least_ brought up Moby Dick."

Calista started blankly. "Erm. What?"

"Moby Dick, you prat! The book? About the big whale and the sea captain, and uh — actually, I don't know what else, because no one actually reads it, we all just pretend to have done?"

"That's a _book_? Muggles have a book about a whale that's named after — em, _that_?"

"Holy shite. What _do_ they teach you, before you start Hogwarts, if you've never even heard of Moby Dick?"

"Useful things," Calista shot back, "Like not to eat Floo Powder — argh, get rid of that bloody pudding, seriously!"

Amelia obliged, walking over to the nearest rubbish bin to chuck it. "So," she said, "I was going to ask if you wanted me to come over, after your dinner with Uncle Doom and Aunt Manicure, but I'd probably have too much trouble figuring out the Floo powder…"

"Oh, shut it, you," Calista said, but there was no longer any malice. "Your fireplace isn't connected, anyway, and _mine's_ only connected to Hogwarts for travel. Come on over; I'll meet you at the Apparition spot at eight. Gives me an excuse to leave — erm, Uncle Doom."

"Should I bring one bottle of wine or two?"

"Amelia, it's _Wednesday_."

Amelia smirked. "Two, then. I'd invite Penny, but…" she shrugged.

"What's wrong with her?" Calista asked, "And with Percy? I haven't really spoken to either of them in a couple of weeks."

"I don't know," Amelia said, "They both _say_ it's things at work, but…" she shrugged. "I think they're going to break up."

Calista blinked. "They can't, they're nauseatingly perfect together."

"Not anymore. They just argue, all the time, or least that's what Penny says; I can't even get Percy to answer my owl, these days. Too important for me, I guess, now that he's working for that Crotch bloke."

Calista snorted. "It's _Crouch_."

"I know."

"And anyway," Calista reflected, "What did you mean by 'all of a sudden' — hasn't Percy _always_ been a sanctimonious twat?"

"Well, yeah," Amelia said, "But now, it's like he _really_ means it. Anyway, I've got to go, I'll fill you in later — seven o'clock, two bottles, right?"

"Eight o'clock," Calista corrected, " _No_ bottles."

"Seven-thirty," Amelia agreed, "One bottle."

"This isn't a negotiation —"

"It was, but now it's settled. See you at seven-thirty!"

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista thought that she had done an admirable job avoiding an argument with Uncle Lucius simply by avoiding him altogether, but her luck ran out a scarce moment after Narcissa had ushered her into the foyer of Malfoy Manor.

"Calista, my dear," Lucius said, before she'd even fully extracted herself from Narcissa's perfumed hug, "It's so lovely to see you again — at last."

 _What's that supposed to mean?_ She was tempted to snap back, but she _knew_ full well what it was supposed to mean, and besides, she'd promised her father she'd try not to start an argument. Instead of responding immediately, she used a tactic Gerald had told her about a couple of days ago: deep breath, count to three, exhale, and _then_ reply. She wondered where he'd come up with that particular tactic.

"I'm sorry, Uncle Lucius," she said, evenly, "I've just been very busy."

"Surely not too busy for family?" Lucius said, but he didn't seem intent on holding her to an answer, for once; instead, he made a sweeping gesture towards the dining room. "Come; you and I shall set the table, while your aunt finishes preparing dinner."

Family dinners were not so unusual to Calista anymore, though it had admittedly been awhile since she'd had one _here_. She caught herself reaching for the door of the armoire that held one of several sets of perfectly-matched dinnerware, and hastily, she lifted her wand before her uncle noticed. She was used to eating with Gerald's family — she had a strong suspicion that he kept insisting because she was so rotten at keeping food on hand in her own house — and even though Gerald and Terry _could_ set the table with magic, they seldom did.

She pointed her wand at the armoire instead, sending a trio of plates and goblets to one end of the table; behind her, Lucius shrunk the enormously oversized table down to a quarter of its length, and set out silverware.

"Wine, Calista?" Lucius asked, wand poised at the smaller cupboard that held the liquor glasses and, she knew, a decanter of wine; he always asked, since that first time, and she almost always refused politely. Tonight, however, she thought perhaps she could use the additional fortification.

"Yes," she said, "Please."

If he found her assent unusual, he didn't say so; he merely poured three glasses, sending them sailing neatly to their intended places, and then tapped his wand to the cupboard, closing the decanter back inside.

After that, they were alone in the dining room, facing each other. Calista remembered that her father wanted her to thank Lucius for 'helping' her with his donation to the hospital, but she couldn't quite bring herself to say the words, so instead she managed, politely: "I hope you've been well, Uncle Lucius."

"Likewise," Lucius said, and then, with a small smirk: "I trust things at St. Mungo's have been better, since the last time I saw you."

Calista blinked, and willed herself not to scowl. Mercifully, they were interrupted then, by the door swinging open. Several platters of food drifted into the dining room, followed closely by Narcissa, and Calista almost thought she'd been spared by the few moments of activity it took to get the dishes on the table, the three of them settled in chairs, and plates filled.

She'd barely popped her first bite of roast into her mouth when her uncle's soft inquiry came again:

"I asked you a question, Calista. Have things been better for you at St. Mungo's?"

Calista swallowed her food and took a breath. _One, two, three._

"You didn't technically ask me," she couldn't quite resist pointing out, "You just said you trusted things were better."

"And?" Her uncle pressed, flaring his nostrils impatiently, "That Hipworth woman signed your release to work with the Experimental Charms Committee, did she not?"

That, at least, was easy enough to answer. "She did," Calista confirmed, shortly.

"Good," her uncle said, but he wasn't letting her off the hook that easily: "I know they're allowing you to take days off, because Narcissa tells me you've just come back from a holiday in Provence."

Calista nodded, stiffly, knowing he wasn't done.

"I presume the inventory is being kept, as well, of wasted materials?"

"Yes." _And Astra's sniping at me about it every single day._ She snaked her hand out towards her wineglass, and took a much smaller sip than she wanted to.

"Good," her uncle said, again, and: "What of the cauldrons? I expect the replacements I instructed them to procure are to your liking?"

Merlin, was he deliberately goading her? That blasted portrait said something about the cauldrons every time she went past, so that she was beginning to think the petrol station toilet might be the better route, after all.

"Yes," she said, a bit stonily despite her best intentions. Lucius smiled thinly.

"Well, as that's all in order, a 'thank you' would be nice," he said; Calista hurriedly gulped down another mouthful of wine; she _couldn't_ say it, but if she didn't, her father would be livid…

Lucius huffed, and waved his hand dismissively. "Of course, I never get one from Draco, either," he said, and he picked up his own glass by the stem, inspecting its contents carefully. "Calista, that's a fine wine," he added, almost carelessly, "Kindly treat it at such, and don't swig it like a heathen."

Calista blinked, caught slightly off-guard; was that really all he was going to say?

Incredibly, it seemed as if it _was_ ; the topic of conversation shifted, and soon, they were speculating about the Triwizard Tournament taking place at Hogwarts.

"Draco wanted to enter, of course," Lucius said, "But they've instituted some sort of ridiculous age limit —"

"Oh, no, I'm pleased they've set a limit!" Narcissa interjected, almost breathlessly, "Lucius, darling, you know how dangerous the tournament used to be, imagine if Draco were in it — I'd be beside myself until June!"

Lucius nodded briefly, acknowledging her concerns, and then, after chewing a mouthful of roast: "I suppose at least we can be thankful that Potter can't enter, either; the last thing I want is another barrage of letters bemoaning what Potter has and what Potter did. I'm hopeful that this year, especially, with the Quidditch Cup cancelled, we'll finally be granted a respite from that particular line of complaint."

Narcissa frowned delicately. "Lucius, be kind," she chided him softly, "Draco's already had such a difficult start to the school year, the poor thing."

Calista's ears perked, and she felt a small frown find its way to her face; what was Aunt Narcissa talking about?

"I can assure you, the governors have heard my complaints," Lucius said, and then with a swift look to Calista:

"You will inform us, of course, if you hear of any further such assaults against our son, from your father, or from any of your friends that remain at school?"

"Erm," said Calista, who didn't have the slightest idea what they were talking about, "I — of course I will."

"Of course, if I were still a governor myself," Lucius mused, "I wouldn't rest until Moody and Dumbledore were _both_ driven out of the castle."

 _Moody?_ Calista felt her heart pick up speed, as her mind immediately went wild, shifting all of her worst fears about the ruthless man's antagonism towards her father onto her younger cousin. What had he done? She couldn't very well ask now, since she was obviously supposed to know, already, but she had to find out…

"He's — Draco's all right, isn't he?" she asked, earnestly, "I mean — he's — erm, recovered, hasn't he?"

Narcissa reached across the table and patted her hand, fondly. "Oh, yes, darling, he's all right; he was quite shaken up, of course, but he's a strong boy."

"I imagine the only lasting damage was to his dignity," Lucius added, "For which I still intend to make Moody pay, of course."

"But don't you have to be careful?" Calista asked, anxiously, "Moody's ruthless — he could — he could m-mur—"

 _Murder you, murder Draco; torture you, torture Dad; have any one of us sent to Azkaban without a trial_. She nearly choked, and swallowed hard, unable to utter the list of crimes she knew had been attributed to Moody in the past, but this time it was Lucius who shifted his left hand, touching the back of hers lightly. It struck Calista as an exceedingly rare gesture; one of the reasons that she'd hardly ever shied away from Uncle Lucius was because he almost never reached out to touch her, despite his wife's frequent enveloping hugs.

"Alastor Moody is no longer an Auror," he reminded her, quietly, "And furthermore, if Moody thinks to inflict any further insult or harm against my family, I believe he will find out that he is not quite as ruthless as I can be."

"But," Calista said, "Draco's stuck at school with him, and my father —"

Lucius smirked. "I don't think you need to worry about your father, Calista. I can only imagine the pieces they'd find Moody in, if he thought to transfigure Severus into a ferret, however briefly."

Calista blinked. Transfigured into a ferret? Was that what had happened to Draco? It wasn't nearly as bad as she'd been expecting, somehow...and strangely, she supposed it would have made her angry, if she hadn't already haunted herself with visions of blood and pain, but _now_ , she could feel nothing but an immense flood of relief that that was all that had happened to her cousin.

"It's very sweet of you to worry so much," her aunt said, "But Lucius is right, Draco and your father are both quite safe."

Calista found that, actually, she could feel something besides relief, after all; she felt her gut wrench with a sudden, heavy guilt. Not only had she not even _heard_ what had happened to Draco, but the truth was that she hadn't even bothered to write to him, since he'd gone back to school. She made a mental note to remedy that, as soon as she got home.

"I do think that's enough of that particular topic," Aunt Narcissa mused, "Calista, darling, do tell us about your holiday; you met some of your young man's family, yes?"

Calista took a breath — Gerald's advice, again — and exhaled, willing her mind to shift towards the question her aunt had asked. After a moment, she found that she was able to do it, and she nodded.

"I met his cousin and his uncle — his mother's family," she couldn't quite resist adding, while she stabbed a forkful of vegetables. Lucius made a small sound of disapproval, but incredibly, he didn't offer any commentary. "We went to some very nice restaurants, and then we —" her cheeks warmed slightly, "We, erm — took a dancing class."

Narcissa was so pleased by this news that she actually _squealed_ , a tiny sound of delight that Calista didn't think she could remember ever hearing from her composed, elegant aunt before.

"Oh, darling, that's _lovely!_ What sort of class was it — did you learn the traditional waltz, or the Viennese?"

Calista blinked, and swallowed a mouthful of sprouts. She hadn't even realised there were different types.

"Erm," she said intelligently, "The… the regular kind, I think. Honestly, I just tried not to step on Gerald's feet, and not to fall down. I only achieved one out of two."

She thought she saw her uncle smirk, but it might have been a trick of the light. Narcissa, however, completely missed the humour in Calista's remarks, or else chose to disregard it; instead, she started a series of stories about her own dance lessons, in her youth, procured with grudging permission from her parents, who thought it was a waste of time.

"Mother thought my blood purity and the family name were enough to procure me a good marriage, you see; but I wanted a _particular_ marriage, and it was well known, even then, that the Malfoys have impeccable taste."

And then, Lucius surprised Calista for the second time that evening; for just a moment, he allowed his detached demeanour to slip, and he tilted his wine glass slightly in his wife's direction, offering her what was undoubtedly the softest look Calista had ever seen on her uncle's face.

"Ah, indeed we do," he said, "And you have always been an impeccable woman, my dear; I never had an eye for any other."

Narcissa appeared, briefly, to positively glow — even her cheeks took on a faint blush — and then, all too soon, she gathered herself in, regaining her composure.

"I did enjoy those dancing lessons," she mused, "Even though my sisters teased me mercilessly."

Calista practically choked on another sip of wine, earning another look of disapproval from her uncle, but she hardly noticed. She was _positive_ that her aunt had said sisters, plural; it was the first time Calista had ever heard her acknowledge that she had more than one.  
She thought of the shoes, the nearly identical pairs that each of her aunts had recommended, and she shifted nervously in her seat, wanting to bring it up but knowing she _couldn't_ — but a moment later, the conversation had moved on. Calista knew she _couldn't_ have mentioned her Aunt Andromeda, or the fact that she was in touch with her, so she didn't quite understand why she was left feeling as if she'd missed something, once the moment fled.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista felt a heavy sense of irony, two days later, as she tapped her wand to the knocker at her Aunt Andromeda's home; she'd been going more or less every Friday of late, which was why she was thoroughly confused by the strange, shuttered look that her aunt answered the door with on that particular Friday.

"Calista," Andromeda said, blankly, as if she'd opened the door to find a sentient cabbage instead of her niece, "I didn't realise you were coming."

She kept her place in the doorway, not inviting Calista in, and it only took Calista the space of a few seconds to start imagining all the worst possible reasons Andromeda could have for not wanting to invite her in; that she had decided that Bellatrix's daughter wasn't someone she wanted to associate with after all was at the top of the list.

"Is something wrong?" she made herself ask, and _that_ at least seemed to stir her aunt to action.

"No, everything's…" her aunt trailed off, and finally stepped aside, motioning her in with a suddenly hurried gesture. "Come in, sweetheart, just be quick about it —"

As if to punctuate her words, she closed the door so hard behind Calista that it caused her to start, and then to scowl, hoping no one had noticed.

"Ted's still at work," Andromeda said, "And Dora's out with one of her friends, but I do expect them both home for dinner."

"Oh." Calista scrutinised her aunt carefully, but though she could see the signs of stress — pinched expression, tight jaw, darting eyes — she couldn't decipher the reason for it, not without crossing a boundary that she absolutely would not. "Do you, uhm, want help with dinner? Gerald's been teaching me a bit, and there's a few things I can make without burning, now."

A brief smile of amusement drifted over her aunt's features, and she nodded. "Yes, as as matter of fact, a bit of help would be most welcome."

She followed Andromeda into the kitchen, where she was given a recipe for seasoning a vegetable side dish; Andromeda sliced chicken with her wand.

"So," her aunt said, after a moment, "Your boyfriend cooks, does he?"

"Yes," Calista said, chancing another glance at her aunt; she was still tense. "He's brilliant at it, which is fortunate, because I'm mostly rubbish." She glanced down at the head of broccoli in front of her. "Don't worry, though, I'm pretty sure I can at least handle this."

"Useful skill in a man, that; I'm so glad that Ted is handy in the kitchen, too. It means we can take turns."

"I don't think he trusts me to make anything myself yet, and for good reason," Calista admitted, "There was an incident with a potato…" she felt herself start to blush at _that_ memory, "And, erm, anyway, I mostly just keep him company and help a bit with the sides, like this."

Andromeda nodded, and then, with a mildly curious look: "Does he have his own flat that you go to?"

"No, he lives with his Mum and his brother — well, Terry's at Hogwarts, now — but I go over a lot for dinner, and he st — erm, he comes to my house, too. Since Dad's at school."

Her aunt's brow lifted briefly, and Calista braced herself for a comment about her near slip — admitting that Gerald had been staying over occasionally in the last few weeks, which would lead to her aunt making an obvious and mortifying conclusion — but all Andromeda said was, "I'm glad you have compan —"

She stopped, and froze, and it only took Calista an instant to see why: an enormous black dog had just padded into the kitchen, sniffing the air and eyeing both of them curiously.

"You didn't tell me you got a —" Calista started, and then she did a double-take; the dog really was enormous, but more than that, it was eerily familiar —

"Shi — that's the dog!" she said breathlessly, dropping a chunk of broccoli on the floor as the realisation hit her, "That's the dog I saw at Hogwarts on the night when —"

She trailed off, because suddenly she wondered, again, if she was going mad — _again_ , she had the oddest feeling that the dog could understand her, and as if to illustrate the point, the dog sat down, and looked directly at her, and then it cocked its head, almost _playfully_ , and —

"Yuff?" Calista blinked; she really must be going mad, because it seemed almost as if the dog had said _Yes?_ , as if it were waiting for her to go on — but that wasn't possible, unless…

"When Sirius Black was on the grounds, and —" _Merlin's blood._

A line of text swam through the back of her mind, from a letter that she still kept hidden at the bottom of her wardrobe, even though she knew no one else would be able to read it:

 _He tells me he's heard your voice, and that actually, so did I, only I didn't know it was you_ ; and there was another line, too, one that burned so brightly in her mind's eye that it was giving her a blinding, flashing headache:

 _I think you've got more guard dogs than you know._

"What the — _bloody hell_ — he's the dog, isn't he? He's an Animagus."

Suddenly, there was a faint little pop, and then — _and then_ —

Sirius Black was standing in the middle of her aunt's kitchen.

"Moony was right," he said, reflecting, in a voice that rung in her ears, familiar in a strange, heavy way that threatened to drag her into the past, or into a dream, "She _is_ clever."

"And you're a fool, Sirius," Andromeda scolded; it had been a moment since Calista had looked at her aunt, but she saw now that her face was pale, fearful. "What d'you think you're playing at, revealing yourself like that —"

Sirius shrugged, as if it were of little importance; he seemed a lot more interested in peering down at Calista; he was very tall, and he didn't look at all like the pictures she'd seen in the paper, over the last year or so: instead of long, matted hair and beard, he was clean-shaven and had a cropped haircut. He was wearing black Muggle clothes, and he had obviously put on weight since the pictures that had been in the _Daily Prophet._ He looked a lot more like he had in her memories of being rescued than he had in the aftermath of his Azkaban escape, and Calista supposed that was the only reason she managed to stay on her feet, facing him, and to keep breathing.

"I imagine we could modify her memory if we have to —"

"Try me," Calista muttered, feeling her fingers slip into her pocket;she wrapped them around her wand.

" — But I'm hoping that's not going to be necessary," Sirius finished; he stepped closer, and she took an equally measured step back, still gripping her wand; even though she knew he was innocent of the crimes he'd been imprisoned for, there was still what he had done to her father — and there were still the nightmares, before she'd known the truth, of him coming after her with a gleaming silver knife.

"Merlin's beard, you _do_ look like your mother —" Sirius started, and Calista cut him off again, quite a bit more loudly this time:

"Fuck off."

She expected him to be angry, but instead, he _grinned_ , immediately following her outburst.

"Now _that_ ," he said, "Is undeniably from your father."

"I know," she heard herself say, voice steely, "I know what you did to him, when you were in school — you tried to use Remus to kill him."

"I have a history with _both_ your mother and your father," Sirius acknowledged, a good deal more evenly than she expected him to speak to her, after her accusation, "Neither of which I'm holding against _you_ at the moment; and it's funny you mention Moony, because he's the one that led me to believe you could do the same, with me."

Calista swallowed, trying to calm the rapid beating of her heart, or at least make sure it didn't show, that she was rattled.

"What do you want?" she asked, warily, "Why did you show yourself to me?"

Sirius raised a brow. "Because I wanted to meet you, obviously. I wanted to see for myself what had become of you."

Again, he stepped toward her, and again, she stepped back.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Sirius said, and then he cocked his head reflectively, much as he had when he was a dog. "Of course, you've never believed that before."

"Calista, sweetheart —" Andromeda started, but Calista cut them both off with a defensive snarl:

"I'm fine; just don't come near me."

Andromeda frowned, but Sirius seemed more willing to accept her directive. He nodded, and he took a step back, and suddenly Calista could breathe again.

"I have something to say," Calista said, and her eyes were locked on Sirius' face; it was really to easy to imagine, the way he looked now, that the last thirteen years had been imagined; he was _so tall_ and he looked the same, and —

But that was the difference, wasn't it? She realised it even as the words spilled out of her mouth; now, she had something to say.

"I'd very much like to hear it," Sirius said, and the oddest thing was that she really believed he was sincere.

"I need to ask you a question first."

Sirius nodded; Andromeda hovered anxiously, but Calista hardly noticed. Her fingers were still gripped around her wand, though her grip was less than sure, since her palms were sweating like mad.

"How did you escape?"

"You just saw it; as a dog. I slipped through the bars, and I swam to shore." His eyes were riveted just as keenly to her face as hers were to his; after a moment, he looked away, and: "I suppose you'll also want to know how I kept my sanity, in that place."

"Yes," she said, practically before the words were even out of his mouth.

"The truth," he said, simply, and there was a soft sort of sadness in his tone, "I knew that I was innocent of the crimes I was sentenced for."

Calista exhaled. "I imagine that wasn't a happy thought, given the circumstances."

"No," Sirius agreed, "It was not; and so the dementors couldn't take it, and so I kept my mind."

Calista nodded, and with an enormous effort, she took yet another breath, and another swallow. And then:

"What about her? Does she have — did she have… a truth?"

"You want to know if she's still dangerous." It wasn't a question; they both knew exactly why she was asking. Calista nodded tightly.

"I wish I could tell you that she's a useless, quivering mess," Sirius said, quietly, "But I listened to her for twelve years, and I can't say she's changed much at all."

"I suppose I —" Calista set her jaw, as stubbornly as she'd ever done, because _for fuck's sake,_ she would not cry, not now and not in front of this man. " — expected as much."

"I do like to think, though," Sirius said, oddly reflective once more, "That it would destroy her to see you now, the way Moony and Dromeda described you, the way I'm seeing you."

"What?" Calista bit off, far more bitterly than she meant to, "Whole?"

Despite her acrid tone, Sirius nodded, almost matter-of-factly. "Whole," he agreed, "And, I think, a greater adversary than she ever imagined she'd be creating, when she turned her wand to you."

"You couldn't possibly know that," Calista said, deflecting the compliment, though she couldn't quite say why, "You've spoken to me for all of five minutes."

Sirius grinned again, inexplicably. "I saw you hold a fully-transformed werewolf with a Freezing Charm," he reminded her, "That's supposed to be about as possible as — " he paused, and his grin shifted into a crooked smirk, "Well, as possible as a mute child telling me to 'fuck off'."

 _Fuck;_ despite herself, Calsita had the most unexpected, most _inappropriate_ reaction imaginable; she laughed, and suddenly, inexplicably, she was at ease. She let her fingers fall off her wand.

"I guess that brings me around to what I have to say," she heard herself, "Thank you."

He was silent for a moment, and she felt the need to clarify: "Thank you for taking me from her. For — well, for saving my life — although at the time, believe it or not, I thought you were kidnapping me, and I was trying to figure out whether I could scratch your eyes out and get away."

Sirius lifted a brow, and then he he lifted a hand, and touched a spot just under his left eye. Calista was startled to see a small, faint white line there that she hadn't noticed before.

"Oh, I do very much believe it," he said, almost matter-of-factly, but for the twist of humour in his tone. "And you're welcome, of course. I only wish I'd done it sooner."

"Yeah, that's erm — sort of the theme _du jour_ , when someone talks to me about — about her. But like I said, I'm fine, now."

 _Liar_ , she could hear the internal hiss, and she ignored it, just as she ignored the subtle twist of guilt for being here, for having this conversation, with this man, in the first place.

"Right. And so am I." Sirius smiled wryly. "Now; _are_ we going to have to modify your memory? I'd rather not, just so you know —"

"Try me," Calista said, for the second time, though it wasn't quite as fierce this time, because she suspected he had no intention of doing so, "I promise I'll be faster."

Andromeda shifted, and Calista nearly started; she'd almost forgotten her aunt was there, in the kitchen.

"We may not have to," she said, earnestly, "Calista, you just said that Sirius saved your life, and you must have heard of a life debt…"

Calista blinked. "Are you serious?"

"No," Sirius quipped, immediately, "I am."

Despite herself, despite the levity of the situation, Calista snorted. And then:

"Really, though, are you both fucking _mad_? First of all, you'd have better luck taking my bloody _legs_ than my memory, and secondly, I'm not about to hand _anyone_ back over to those — those _things_ , those dementors."

"I know your heart is in the right place," Andromeda said cautiously, "But Calista, this is an incredibly difficult, and incredibly _critical_ secret to keep…"

"As _he_ well knows, I kept _the fact that I could speak_ secret for over a year," Calista pointed out, acidly, "And I promise you, that's just the beginning; I think I can handle not turning over a man who saved my life to the most vile creatures imaginable."

"See, Dromeda?" Sirius said, "I told you she would be all right."

"I still think it's a dreadful risk," Andromeda fretted, "How can we really _know_ —"

"Calista," Sirius said, suddenly, "Does Sn — does your father know that I wrote to you, or that _you're_ still writing to Moony?"

"Obviously not."

Sirius grinned triumphantly, as if he'd just won a bet. " _That_ ," he said, with satisfaction, "Is how I know."

Calisa managed a tight smile, at that, but his words drove a cold spike of guilt into her gut; not _only_ had she written him; not _only_ was she still writing Remus; it was a hundred times worse than that, now that she'd met him, because she was committing the most egregious offense imaginable, against her father, and yet, she couldn't help it.

She was starting to actually _like_ Sirius.


	10. Secrets Kept

**10\. Secrets Kept**

There wasn't a single thing about the Experimental Charms Committee that Calista didn't like. She liked the sometimes-long walk through the labyrinth of corridors on the second level of the Ministry that usually ended at a tall, steel door, when she'd gotten it right and when the door was in a good mood; she liked the cool, white-walled room where all of the 'Experimental' parts took place; she liked the surge of usefulness she felt when they needed her to mend a bone or reverse an errant spell; she even liked the cramped side-office where she was often relegated to research duty or documenting the day's experiments; she liked the heavy smell of parchment in the air, and the crowded stacks of books that no longer had any hope of fitting into the shelves along the wall.

"Miss Snape."

Calista jerked her head up from the heavy volume that was cradled in her lap, tearing her eyes away from a passage about the runic enchantments on the legendary goblet that was used to choose Champions for the Triwizard Tournament.

"Mr. Ivanforth," Calista said, a bit guiltily, because she was supposed to be researching a counter-spell for a brood of abnormally gravity-resistant puffskeins that had been confiscated in a Ministry raid last month and dumped off on the department, "I'm — er, almost there — just a bit more research."

Mr. Ivanforth lifted a brow, but his expression remained otherwise unmoved. "Unless you mean to suggest that the Goblet of Fire holds the key to the enchantment on the puffskeins, perhaps you should try a different book."

 _Damn._ Ivanforth didn't miss _anything_. He was a much more exacting supervisor than Astra, that was for certain. He expected her to stay late when her work wasn't finished, and to take her turn feeding the blasted puffskeins — preferably not her own fingers, though she'd had a few close calls — and unlike Astra, he didn't give a puffskein's rear end _who_ her Uncle was. Despite all of that, she even liked _him_ , so enamoured was she with everything that happened in those offices.

"I was just — I was only reading it for a moment," she lied, quickly, suppressing further outward signs of guilt from her features.

"I have no doubt that you'll compensate appropriately for any time taken for your personal research," Mr. Ivanforth said, tonelessly and quite matter-of-factly, "However, at the moment, I do have a more pressing matter requiring your immediate assist —"

A pained howl interrupted him, and Calista was on her feet instantly; Gerald would have cringed at the impact of the ancient, heavy book hitting the floor.

"Ooowwww, Ignus, _hurry_ —"

Calista scrambled into the well-lit research space, heart racing — but as soon as she saw Mr. Wimple, she at once understood the source of his pained howl and had to bite the inside of her cheeks to keep from laughing.

"I've brought Miss Snape to assist you," Mr. Ivanforth said, dryly and with the characteristic touch of impatience that he seemed particularly inclined to dole out against Mr. Wimple, "I'm certain she'll solve the problem more efficiently — and more humanely — than I would."

"Mr. Wimple — how in Merlin's name did you — never mind, I don't want to know, just stop moving, you're going to make things worse."

"I was working on my Attachment Charm, and but I realised I'd forgotten to feed the dratted puffskeins. I thought I'd just take care of both problems at once, but —"

Mr. Wimple winced, shrugging and shaking his horned head rapidly, as if to illustrate the folly in his plan. "I had no idea their teeth were so sharp; did you?"

"Erm," Calista said, flexing her own oft-abused fingers, "Yeah, I had an idea. And there are still people think they're _cute_ , what rubbish — anyway, I _really_ need you to stop moving —"

Mr. Wimple complied, though she could see his jaw and his fingers clench with the effort. Calista took the brief opening and pointed her wand —

" _Liberatius Mandibulus!_ " she cried, and a breath later, " _Immobulus!_ "

Rounding up the puffkseins before their irritating tendency towards anti-gravity overtook even _her_ extremely powerful Freezing Charm — and she knew from prior experience that it would — occupied her for several tense, frantic seconds; and only then, once they were secured in their Charmed and bolted-down cage, did she have a chance to survey Mr. Wimple for damage.

"Right," Mr. Wimple said, frowning, "It's lucky I have these horns, really — the ones that latched onto my hair didn't do much damage, I think. The ones that went for my bottom, however —"

Calista rolled her eyes. " _Tergeo_ ," she muttered, to clean the wounds, and then she fished in her pocket, and presented the sheepish Mr. Wimple with a tightly-corked, half-empty jar.

"Same Stitching Salve I gave you last week," she told him, studiously avoiding the injured area with her gaze as soon as she handed the jar over, "You'll want to rub it generously into the — er —"

"Cracks?" Mr. Wimple suggested, with an exaggerated air of delicacy, and Calista scowled.

"Merlin's bal — er, beard —" she grumbled, recalling Mr. Ivanforth's presence somewhere behind her just in time, " _The wounds._ I'm not doing it for you this time. In fact, just keep the bloody jar."

Mr. Wimple collected himself, and the jar, and took off to the washroom. For a moment, the silence was broken only by chirping of the puffskeins as they cheerfully floated to the top of their enclosure; and then, from behind her, a sigh so heavy it nearly caused her to start.

"I love my job," Mr. Ivanforth mused, seemingly to himself, though certainly loud enough for Calista to hear him, "I value our mission; I believe in the spirit of experimentation."

Calista half-turned, questioning. Mr. Ivanforth's face looked as grey and exhausted as his sigh had sounded.

"You know," he said, somewhat wistfully, and this time it appeared that he was at least partially speaking to her, "My husband works in the budget office. It's quiet there. There are no explosions; hardly any bloodshed; and certainly _no puffskeins_."

"Well, that last bit certainly sounds appealing; but you wouldn't really want to leave all of this, would you?"

Mr. Ivanforth blinked, as if he hadn't quite expected her to respond.

"I suppose there's a reason I haven't, even after forty years," he said, after a brief, rather scrutinising gaze; and then, abruptly, he turned, briefcase in hand, evidently having had his fill of ' _all this'_ for the day, at least.

Calista felt her eyes slip wistfully towards the Research Office, even before she heard Mr. Ivanforth twist the knob on the far door. She could practically _feel_ the soft, pebbled binding of a particular book against her fingertips.

"Ah, Miss Snape, before I forget —" Mr. Ivanforth's voice came from just beyond the half-open door, stopping her in her tracks, "I should inform you that I've laid a charm against the books in the office; I really do need you to resolve that puffskein problem before you go back to your, ah — _personal_ research."

"I — what?" Calista gaped. "I'm supposed to figure it out _myself_ now? Do you have any idea how long that will take?"

Mr. Ivanforth smiled thinly. "I suppose that depends on how badly you want to continue your reading. Good evening, Miss Snape."

She heard the door click shut; she felt a surging, licking little flame of irritation begin to press itself against her forehead and a sudden, helpless sort of unease yawing in her gut; and _still_ , if anyone had asked her at that moment, she would have said in that she liked it there, in the offices of the Charms Committee.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

 _The night is dark, almost entirely pitch-black, save for a faint, half-light from a narrow sliver of moon above. The trees around the lake have long since lost their leaves, even though it's only early October, and the bare branches are like knobbled fingers, clutching desperately at the tearing, screaming wind._

 _There's a chill in the air colder than anything the wind can carry; a chill like the rattling breath of dementors, or like the marble stillness of the grave. It whispers in the ear, urgent and somehow mirthful:_ Run. Run, now. See what's left to save.

 _The clouds shift; the moon slips free, and suddenly it's no moon at all. The light changes, bathing the lake and the bony trees around it in an eerie green glow._

 _Looking up is certain to bring nothing but dread and horror, and yet, it's impossible not to —_

 _The wind rises, and suddenly it is a scream; a terrible, familiar scream that wrenches his heart out of his chest, up through his throat and he manages to hold it, just, between his teeth as he runs towards the source of the awful green light, wand drawn and ready even though he already knows it's too late._

 _She's there, at the edge of the lake, and he knows already what he will find, but he forces himself to look anyway, to confirm what the sign of the skull and snake above her limp form has already told him._

 _She is dead, black eyes unseeing, and yet somehow still full of accusation:_ You promised, _he can still hear her voice, on the edge of a snarl, if he tries:_ You promised I would be safe.

 _He can't reply; there is nothing to say that will bring her back, and if he opens his mouth, surely his heart will leap out from between his teeth, and he doesn't deserve to die so quickly, so easily, when he has broken perhaps the only promise that ever really mattered._

 _He straightens, and turns away, at once sickened and resigned; he knows she is gone, has known it since the moment he recognised the eerie, brilliant emerald spectre of the serpent against the black night sky: but before he can grieve, he must know who has done it, this time._

 _He lifts his wand arm quite mechanically, as the shadowy figure approaches. Most of the time, it is her mother, but sometimes, lately, it has been the werewolf. It doesn't matter; whoever it is, he will kill them, and then he will wake in a cold sweat, and he will remind himself sternly that no one has seen the Dark Mark in a very long time…_

 _It isn't Bellatrix. It isn't the werewolf._

 _A thin, lipless smile forms on an unnaturally serpentine face, and he feels his blood run so cold that it turns to ice in his heart, in his very teeth._

' _Hello, Severus,' the Dark Lord says, 'It's been a long time, hasn't it?'_

Severus woke, heart hammering and legs like jelly; he disentangled himself from his bed, and crossed the cool stone floor with his nightclothes clutched about himself and a scowl twisting up his mouth.

His neck swung automatically to give him a look at the door beside his as he exited his bedroom. It was firmly shut, which meant Calista was safely sleeping —

 _No,_ he reminded himself, as his scowl deepened, _It means she isn't here_ , and now that he was fully awake, even the sliver of witchfire visible at the bottom edge of the door wasn't enough to fool him into thinking she was. He wrapped his cold fingers around the knob and gave it an irritable, jerking twist, sending the door leaping ajar, even though _that_ had irked him just as much as the shut one did, not so very long ago.

He swept into the kitchen, casting a menacing look at the alien kitchen table, as if _it_ were to blame for his haunting dreams, and then he went immediately to the coffeepot.

The mug was scalding, as he clutched it between his fingers and took his usual seat, if it could still be called that.

Coffee was something he'd once enjoyed only occasionally, but so many years ago it had been one of the first tentative bridges formed between his once-flighty daughter and himself, and drinking it now always reminded him of her. He let the warmth of that thought and the warmth from within the mug begin to work, feeling it penetrate the chill in his bones, and tried to pretend that he couldn't feel another, deeper warmth, tingling along the length of his left forearm.

He'd felt the burn of it on and off for weeks, but he'd been able to convince himself it was his imagination or his guilt, until the morning that Calista had come home unexpectedly, and told him the very last thing he wanted to hear.

 _The — the Dark Mark,_ she had said, and he had heard the shudder in her voice, had seen it wrack her narrow shoulders, _Someone set off the Dark Mark at the World Cup._

Thirteen years, he had had, between that night and the worst of his life; thirteen years of relative peace, though he had never seen it as such at the time. After all, hadn't he always known this day would come? Hadn't Dumbledore told him, on the same day that he'd extracted Severus' promise to watch over Lily's son, precisely why her son would need that protection, someday?

He had thought, on that miserable, wrenching day, that he understood the stakes better than anyone; but ironically, it was only _now_ , thirteen years later, that he understood them as well as Lily must have: it was only now that he had a child of his own to protect.

Despite himself, Severus pried his fingers away from his coffee mug, hooked them onto the edge of his sleeve. He made himself look down, at the exposed flesh of his forearm, where he could feel the burn of every mistake he'd ever made.

He clenched his jaw as grimly and tightly as if he really _did_ need to hold his heart in his mouth, and he tugged his sleeve back down, but not before he was forced to admit the truth he had been expecting for thirteen years.

The lines were clearer.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Gerald Boot woke abruptly, heart hammering and fingers trembling with unease, as he tore the blankets quickly away; he felt that he had to stand, _right now_ , and face — and face —

He made it to his feet, and blinked into the darkness, as the shapes around him slowly came into focus. His brother's bed, empty and neatly made for once; the wide, neatly-cornered shapes of his own bookshelves, and the hulking, overflowing monstrosity that housed the majority of Terry's belongings.

He realised that his wand arm was up, even though his wand wasn't in it. He lowered it, slowly, shaking his head against the prickling sensation of fear that had woken him in the first place.

 _There's no one here._ Gerald told himself this firmly, silently, even as his eyes narrowed in the direction of the nearest set of shelves, as if a hidden adversary might suddenly burst forth from one of his encyclopaedias.

"There's no one here," he muttered, and the flat sound of his own voice against the walls of the room convinced him that it was the truth. Frowning, he crossed the room and flipped the light switch on, searching for his wand, and ultimately freeing it from the tangle of blankets he'd left on the floor beside his bed.

Still, even squinting against the sudden brightness of his own bedroom, wand gripped securely in his fist, he could feel that something was _wrong_. His head still prickled uncomfortably, his skin was clammy, and his heart was thudding against his eardrums with a painful intensity.

In a flash, his dream came back to him: a vast, cavernous courtroom; shadowy figures crowding the edges of the room, eyes fixed in a hard, silent judgment. His father, somehow as tall as if he were half-giant, glaring down at him with _that look_ , the one that told Gerald it was time to make sure Terry was safely out of sight…

' _I'm telling the truth,'_ Gerald remembered insisting, so fervently that he had probably even said it out loud, probably had mumbled it, desperately into his pillow, _'He's the one that's lying, he always lies…'_

They didn't believe him; he had felt that in the hard stares of the figures all around, in the chill of the courtroom as it seemed to expand around him, defying the laws of even magically-influenced physics, until he couldn't even see where the room ended anymore.

" _I can prove it_ ," he'd said, or at least his mouth had moved; but it was as if the air had thinned as the room expanded, and he could hardly breathe, let alone speak — and _then_ —

Gerald shuddered, as the last bit of his nightmare, the bit that had awoken him, slipped back into the forefront of his mind, replaying itself.

' _Hem-hem,' a terribly high-pitched cut into the thinning air and into Gerald's last bit of hope simultaneously, as Dolores Umbridge stepped suddenly into view; in this vision, she was nearly as tall as Gerald's father, and her smile put him in mind of a wolf's fangs, despite her unnaturally perfect, even teeth._

' _I think that's an excellent idea,' Umbridge announced to the cavernous room, 'Let's see just how much of the truth we've been getting from you, young man.'_

 _She smirked, and then another familiar face had appeared at her shoulder. Gerald started, and for an instant he felt a spark of hope, as he recognised his teacher and Calista's father, Professor Snape; but then, beside_ him _came Calista's horrible uncle, the one who always gave him an uneasy, prickling feeling in his mind…_

' _Mr. Snape,' Umbridge smiled sickeningly, 'Mr. Malfoy. Thank you for joining me. I think this will be more effective if we all do it at once, yes?'_

 _Before he could even attempt to appeal to Professor Snape for help, before he could so much as lift his own wand in defense, all three of them had pointed theirs squarely at his face._

 _They did not Stun him; they did not hurt him. Instead, they attacked the very thing that had always been his safety, his refuge._

' _Legilimens!'_

Gerald shivered, from the memory or from the now-cold sweat that was coating his body, and rubbed insistently at his temples. Now that he was awake, he _knew_ it was a dream; he knew that he wasn't really under attack, that this horrible, prickling feeling in his head was a symptom of the panic that was the only thing _truly_ invading it at the moment, but knowing didn't ease it.

He clenched his jaw grimly, a trick that he'd used throughout his childhood to keep himself from crying, when doing so would only have made his father's punishments worse; and then he used another trick, a steady, measured inhale and exhale that he'd learned from his books.

 _It was a dream_ , he reminded himself, over and over again, even when the words stretched and shifted and didn't quite seem like real words anymore, _It was a dream. It wasn't real. The trial hasn't happened yet, and Professor Snape — Severus — would never help Umbridge_ or _my father…_

He couldn't quite tell himself that the man wouldn't invade his mind; after all, he _had_ , or at least he had attempted to, and Mr. Malfoy had made the same attempt nearly every time he'd seen the man.

He'd never told Calista. He knew it would upset her, and he hadn't wanted to cause any further trouble between her and her family, and he'd always been able to _resist_ the attack _(hadn't_ _he?)_ but _now_ …

Now, it was three o'clock in the morning, and his head was still prickling and his heart still pounding insistently, and his father's trial was less than a week away, and he wasn't feeling particularly confident , suddenly, in his ability to resist much of anything.

Despite his panic, there was one thing that he always had, and that was an extraordinary ability to cling to hope, however faint its glow might be. When he'd been very small, he'd hung on to the hope of his mother coming home from work each day, and tucking himself and his younger brother safely into bed; when he'd gotten a little older, he'd had the crisp parchment of the Obfuscation Order to recall in his dark times, a paper shield; a little older still, and he'd had the image of a fierce, empathetic girl that didn't back down when she was outsized or outnumbered by bullies _or_ shadows.

He felt the corners of his mouth twitch, and his heart settle, just a little. _Mon colibri._ He could see her now, refusing to back down once again; and this time, it wasn't her stepping between him and Flint that he saw, it was something far more consequential, and far more _relevant_.

He recalled the rigidity of her profile and the intensity of her reassuring presence beside him, while her fingers worked the shapes of runes and her gaze tore into his father's.

His head still didn't feel quite right, and in the absence of a racing heart, Gerald felt weak and slightly wobbly; it would surely be a long night, and returning to sleep didn't seem likely, but at least he had an idea, a solution to something that had obviously been troubling him, more and more, for far longer than he should have let it.

If there was anything that could comfort Gerald even more than hope, it was a _plan_.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista slipped hurriedly through the narrow gap her Aunt Andromeda allowed in the doorway, donning her winter cloak against the unseasonable chill in the air, and trying not to imagine the added weight of her guilt upon her shoulders.

She reminded herself sternly that this had to be her last visit here, to her aunt's house, until Sirius Black was no longer staying there — and then she reminded herself, just as sternly, that she'd promised herself the very same thing the _last_ time she'd come, and yet here she was again, with words crowding the back of her throat, and shadows crowding her heart.

She should have left well enough alone, after that first time meeting him; she told herself that again, as well, though she knew it wouldn't be of any use. She was drawn there, drawn to that comfortable house and the decidedly _un_ comfortable silences that passed between her and Sirius, between the stilted, uneasy attempts to talk about something, _anything_ besides the thing they always ended up talking about.

It made sense, in a horrible, morbid sort of way; after all, nearly everything they had in common led back to the same place: he had known _her_ , he was related to _her_ , he had rescued Calista from _her_ , and then… and then, he had spent twelve years in Azkaban, listening to _her_.

"What if you hadn't been able to become a dog?" Calista had pressed, this time, and that was how they'd gotten started on it again, "But you still knew you had to escape, to — to go after something very important —"

"Pettigrew," Sirius had growled, and she'd suppressed a shiver at the animalistic growl in his words; there were moments when she sat beside him that she had to double-take, and be certain he _wasn't_ becoming a dog again. "Once I saw Fudge's paper, and I knew that miserable, low-life _scum_ was roaming free, and that he was going to be in the same building as James' son — my godson… I knew I had to escape."

 _But if you hadn't been an Animagus…?_ Calista bit her tongue, knowing there was a chance he would stop talking, if she interrupted him.

"I was the only one who knew," Sirius went on darkly, "I _had_ to find him, to make him pay —"

"Then how?" Calista pressed, almost desperately, despite herself; a terrible vibration was rattling her from the inside, and she had to clench her hands together in her lap to stop herself from visibly shaking; if Sirius saw it, he might refuse to tell her any more. "How would you have escaped, if not as a dog?"

"I'd have found a way," Sirius said stoutly, darkly; "Perhaps I'd have nicked Fudge's wand, found a way to fend the dementors off long enough to slip away." He chuckled, utterly without humour, and Calista had told herself that the blackness, the bleakness in his eyes, was not her responsibility to address, because he was _so close_ to revealing what she was really asking, what she _had to know_.

"I was starved enough to slip between the bars as a dog," he smirked, teeth bared. "So why not as a man?"

 _So it could be done_ , her mind had whirled, _she could do it; if she grows desperate enough, or angry enough, or…_

"Or skinny enough," her mouth choked on the words, but there were _so many_ building up in her throat, that she shouldn't have been surprised that a few finally eked their way out.

Andromeda had come into the sitting room then, and both of them had moved abruptly, as if they'd known she wouldn't approve of the way they sat, at opposite ends of the low, looming sofa, each wallowing in their own personal darkness

"I ought to write Moony," he'd said, aloud, and only _then_ had Calista recalled the flimsy excuse she'd given herself for returning to the house, this _one last time_ — she realised she hadn't even remembered to ask him if he or Remus had any ideas on reversing the anti-gravity enchantment on the puffskeins at the Experimental Charms office.

 _I was meaning to ask_ , she tried to make herself say, as she'd told herself she would, _Since the two of you worked on that map —_

But she couldn't; she couldn't force those innocuous words past the ones jamming up her windpipe; couldn't suddenly bring the subject back around to perhaps the _one_ thing they'd ever discussed that had nothing to do with _her_ — she could only force herself to rise steadily from the sofa, and nod a stiff good-bye to her aunt.

"I'm sorry I can't stay for dinner this time," she said woodenly, finding a path through the thorned phrases filling her insides at last, "Gerald's supposed to meet me, at home…"

"I understand," Andromeda had said, warmly enough, though Calista was never quite certain she was fooling her aunt at all, "I'll see you next week, I expect."

"Probably not," Calista had said, just as she'd said last Friday, and the Friday before that, "I expect I'll be working late."

After all of that, it was hardly a wonder that her shoulders felt particularly heavy when she left; she was lying to all of them, to Sirius and Andromeda and even herself about her reasons for stopping by, every Friday afternoon; to her Aunt Narcissa about the fact that she was stopping by Andromeda's at all; to Gerald, every time she told him she'd gotten everything out of Sirius she needed; and somehow, though she'd learned her lesson multiple times over, she was lying to her father _again_ , so egregiously that even thinking about it made her ill.

She told herself, as she wrapped her cloak stubbornly against the wind, that she would simply _stop_ thinking about it; but then, wasn't that just another lie?

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

"I suppose," came a low, reproachful voice from Severus' fireplace, "You're busy tonight, as well; just as you were last weekend, and just as you'll undoubtedly be next weekend."

"You suppose correctly," Severus replied coolly, lifting his gaze to the mantle, just out of reach of Ferada Yaxley's resigned, narrowed glare.

"You've been busy since September," Ferada said, quietly.

"Yes," Severus agreed, sourly, "Since term started at the very school where I teach; do you suppose there's a correlation?"

"That's one way to look at it," Ferada agreed, "Another, of course is that you've been busy since Calista found out about us —"

" _This has nothing to do with Calista!_ " Severus snarled, nearly before the words had even reached his ears, and his fingers curled, glance shooting towards the door; if he left the room, would Ferada leave? Or would he return, hours later, to find her face still floating, patiently and forlornly, in his fireplace?

"Has it occurred to you that perhaps she would _want_ you to be happy?" Ferada challenged, "Perhaps if you would actually speak —"

"Shut up," he hissed, "I've told you, this has nothing to do with —"

"Oh, I think we both know it does, Severus," Ferada snapped an interruption, patience having evidently worn thin at last, "And I suppose you still allow her to have her boyfriend over to your home — yet, you don't demand the same courtesy of her?"

"Get out of my fireplace."

Ferada flinched, and then something in her visage stiffened, as if she were bracing herself.

"That's what you really want, is it?" she asked, quietly.

" _Obviously_ ," Severus sneered, petulantly, despite the fact that he didn't quite know _what_ he really wanted; Ferada nodded, with finality.

"Very well," she said, "I'll leave you to yourself; I won't call again."

"I —" Severus felt himself blanche, "I'll call you, then, once…" He trailed off; what was he supposed to say? _Once I'm not busy?_ As she'd said, they both knew damn well that wasn't really the reason he was pushing her so adamantly away.

"No, Severus," Ferada said, quite firmly, "I'm tired of calls, and I'm tired of excuses; if you want to speak with me, you'll come see me; you know where I live."

She disappeared, then, and Severus' eyes were glued suddenly and anticlimactically to an empty fireplace; and all at once, he had had enough of empty rooms and empty hearths.

He told himself that he merely wanted to see Calista, to ensure she was all right after the eerie, haunting dream he'd had several nights prior; he told himself that he had absolutely no intention of broaching the subject of Ferada with her, and then he tossed a pinch of Floo powder into the fireplace.

"Spinner's End," he said, because he'd never quite been able to call the place _home_.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Gerald was thoroughly startled from the pages of his book by a gentle, crackling _whoosh_ and a soft snarl that came an instant later.

"Gerald," Professor Sn — _no_ , _Severus_ — said, emerging from the lit fireplace, "Where is Calista?"

Gerald leaned forward, plucking his bookmark from the coffee table, and settling it neatly into the pristine binding of his book, as his gaze lifted to meet the older man's.

"She's in the kitchen," Gerald said, wearily and candidly, "Studying, and also insisting she's not hungry, ineffectually enough that I don't believe her, but insistently enough that I'm not going in there to cook anything until she's decided to occupy another room."

Severus frowned. "Did something happen? Is she all right?"

"Nothing unusual happened," Gerald said, "She's nearly always like this after —" _Merlin._ He cut himself off, just before he'd accidentally said _after she talks to him._ "Erm, after she has a bad day at work," he finished; he offered up a prayer to any god that might listen that he'd managed to keep his tone steady.

 _Shite._ Severus' eyes were boring into his, suddenly. In the space of his skipped heartbeat, he decided to hold his gaze steady, even though it would make him an easier read; surely, looking away would only raise Severus' suspicion.

"A bad day at work?" Severus questioned; Gerald simultaneously felt the uncomfortable prickle of — what had Severus called it before, a _rattling at the door_ in his mind — and a flash of mingled fear and anger. "I thought she was with the Charms Committee on Fridays?"

"She is," Gerald said, and _of course_ , since he was trying desperately not to think about it, the words _Sirius Black_ , _she's like this after she talks to Sirius Black_ were slipping about the forefront of his mind. "She — erm, perhaps you should ask her, she wasn't very clear —"

The pressure in his head increased, or else in his fear he imagined it did; he thought the set of his mouth might have faltered slightly, too, and it felt like a last resort when he muttered, abruptly: "Something about puffskeins," and finally, the pressure abated, as quickly as it had begun.

"Ah, yes," Severus said, as if the last few seconds hadn't happened, as if he, Gerald, _hadn't_ almost accidentally revealed the most critical secret that Calista was trusting him with, "She did mention something about them in her last letter, I believe."

With that, Severus turned, and it wasn't until the kitchen door slid closed behind him, and he heard the low murmur of Severus' voice beyond, that he felt the panic drain from his suddenly tired limbs.

He felt his fingers tremble, and automatically, he snatched up his book to disguise it, lest it get the better of him, in case Severus came back. He perched gingerly on the edge of the sofa, and forced himself to stare down at whichever page he'd placed the bookmark in; he probably read the same sentence a hundred times without understanding any of the words.

He half-expected the rising pitch of an argument from the room beyond; but for perhaps ten minutes, there were only murmurs, low and indistinct, and long silences between. Just when he wondered whether it would be best to go home, the door slid open again.

He glanced up just long enough to ascertain that Severus was the first one to leave the kitchen; surely he imagined the tension in the back of his mind that made him lower his eyes stubbornly back to the page, and surely it was just as certain that he was imagining the tell-tale _whoosh_ of Floo powder clouding the grate; and just as soon as he'd made up his mind to look up and prove it to himself, he saw Severus step into the fireplace, and Calista frowning, in his wake.

Gerald blinked, and pressed his finger to the spine of his book. "Where is he going?" he asked warily, simultaneously attempting to decipher the odd expression on Calista's face.

"To Mrs. Yaxley's house, I suppose," she said, so softly that Gerald almost didn't catch what she'd said. "Since I told him I didn't care if he did."

"Erm — but you _do_ care, don't you?" Gerald replaced his finger with his bookmark, and set the heavy volume down again, rising to his feet; it was certainly the impression she had always given him, though he supposed she'd never outright said she was against it.

"Doesn't really matter, does it?" Calista's mouth twitched, as if in protest against the bitterness in her voice. "I don't really have a right to complain about anything he does, given where I've just come from, now do I? I told him whatever I thought would make him leave, before he realised I was hiding something…"

"He's bound to realise it eventually," Gerald said, and if his tone was more fervent than he intended, who would blame him, in that moment? "Calista, you can't keep this up forever…"

"I'm not," she snarled, facing him directly for perhaps the first time since she'd met him outside the front door, face drawn. "I'm not going again; and he's _not_ going to find out. He _can't_ find out."

"You said that last week," Gerald reminded her; he winced, either at the all-too-recent memory of the unwelcome _rattling_ her father had subjected him to, or at the glare she aimed at him, suddenly full-force. "And the week before; surely, there's nothing more he can tell you, at this point…"

"You're the one who told me I should ask," she reminded him, a bit viciously, as if he hadn't already considered the point, didn't already feel wretched enough about it.

"I did," he admitted, "Because I thought asking — I thought knowing — would make you feel better. Instead, whenever you come from your aunt's house, it's like you've just woken up from a nightmare, and I have to wait until Wednesday for you to seem all right again —"

He stopped, heart sinking at a familiar shuttering of her expression.

"I don't want to talk about this anymore," Calista snapped, "And I — I think you should go."

Perhaps not so long ago, he would have acquiesced; even worse, he would have gone home, racked with the belief that he had somehow done something wrong, and _she_ undoubtedly would have sunk further into whatever pit she'd asked Black to dig for her tonight.

But it seemed there was something to be said for carrying such a strong rune of protection around, always, in his heart; it had left a mark.

"No," he said, in rather the same tone he'd reserved for only the most difficult students during his tenure as Head Boy, "I came for dinner, and I'm not leaving until _we've_ eaten it."

Calista gaped. "Excuse me? You can't — it's _my_ house. I said I wanted you to go."

"And _I've_ said I won't until we've eaten dinner," he repeated stoutly; and then, on a sudden inspiration: "If you really want me to leave sooner rather than later, I suggest you help me in the kitchen."

With that, he stepped neatly past her, towards the kitchen; he could practically feel her fuming behind him, but he ignored it, and went to the cupboards, rummaging through their meagre spice collection.

Five minutes passed, and then ten; and then, just when he'd begun to wonder if perhaps he _had_ done something wrong, he heard the sound of running water behind him, and when he turned his head, he saw Calista rinsing vegetables in the sink.

She caught him looking and shot him a reproachful glare; he pretended not to see it, and continued sorting through the spices, taking as long as he could to choose; and when that was done, he took his time selecting a large pot, and filling it with a stream of water from his wand.

He glanced down the length of the small kitchen towards her; she had moved on now, to chopping the carrots with her wand, in small, methodical slices, and so he took up a spot nearly an arm's length away and started on the onions.

"It _is_ like a nightmare," Calista said, at length; when he chanced another glance, her head was bowed studiously over the carrots, "For both of us, I think; but ever since I found out about _his_ escape, it's as if there's a part of me that _knows_ she'll manage it too, unless I can — unless — "

She'd run out of carrots to chop, and predictably, she'd stopped speaking. He could see her jaw tighten, and her shoulders stiffen.

"Unless you can — what, precisely?" Gerald murmured, and he slid a stalk of celery in her direction, neatly and discreetly maneuvering himself a bit closer to her with the same motion, "She's not an Animagus; she's hardly going to _become_ one in Azkaban. If there were another means of escape, someone would have found it long before Sirius Black ever did."

"Well, there _is_ another means," Calista said, and he could hear her wand making quick work of the celery; hurriedly, he snatched up the rest of what he'd brought, and set it down beside what she'd already chopped. "The one that almost worked for her the _first_ time; through me."

Gerald swallowed; suddenly, the sharp scent of the onions beneath his wand was assaulting him, and he set both down quietly, and slipped beside her, running his hands under the tap, rinsing his hands while her own wand kept moving, _tip tip tip_ through a quantity of celery they'd never need.

He saw the corners of her mouth flicker downward; he saw her hands, her wand, tremble just slightly, and then he dried his hands and reached for hers, gently releasing both the wand and the vegetables from them.

 _Cold;_ he'd known they would be. And her heart, he knew, would be pulsing a quick, thready beat in her throat. He settled his chin on her shoulder, cheek to the side of her neck, confirming that as well.

"You know better, _mon colibri_ ," he said quietly, curling her fingers underneath his own, so he could warm them, "You've told me yourself that the curse she used to manipulate you is broken; and even if it weren't, you've told me how strong you are, now; you know that's not possible."

He heard her breath catch; he felt her stiffen, but her fingers remained securely in his, and the light staccato of her pulse still beat close against his cheek.

"Well, and you know you've got all the right evidence, and all of the right knowledge, to win your case," she said, quietly, "And yet — I know it's still keeping you awake; and your hands are shaking now, just as much as mine are."

It was his turn to catch his breath, and then he lifted his chin away from hers, carefully releasing her hands.

 _Damn it;_ she was right. Swiftly, he busied his hands, gathering up handfuls of the vegetables they'd chopped.

"It's not quite the same," he told her, lowering the vegetables into the pot, arranging them carefully around the small, whole chicken he'd put in earlier, with the water. "No matter how prepared I am, I've still got to get a judge to agree with me."

He felt a warmth at his side, as Calista slipped closer, closing the small distance he'd created by shifting his attention to the pot.

"Do you really think he might not not?"

"It's certainly a possibility," he admitted, hoping she wouldn't pick up on the catch in his voice, but knowing she undoubtedly would.

Calista frowned. "Well," she said, and despite everything, he felt the knot in his gut loosening just a bit at the light pressure of her hand on his shoulder, "What if you could know what he might disagree with, and… and alter your testimony, based on that?"

"Of course that sounds ideal in a rhetorical sense," Gerald admitted, realising at once what she meant to imply, "But it doesn't work like that; I have to tell the exact truth, as I'm asked, no matter what; and besides, you can't use legilimency on a judge."

"You mean, you have some sort of moral objection to it that I'm certain I'm about to hear about," Calista said shrewdly, by his ear, "Because I assure you, I _can_."

"It's not just _my_ moral objection," Gerald said, "It would violate the entire judicial system — it's just not an option, no matter how much I might wish it were."

Calista sighed; he felt the warmth of it tickle his ear.

"Only the Muggle judicial system," she muttered, "And it's not like they'd even know…"

"Calista, I don't know if you understand; I'll have to swear an oath, to be utterly truthful."

He felt her pull back in surprise, then.

"Really?" she asked, "Like an Unbreakable Vow? How can they enforce it, without magic —?"

"No, no, not like that, it's… well, it's a very solemn and — and sacred promise, that you'll tell the truth in its entirety."

"But you won't die if you lie?" she pressed.

"Well, no, but there are other penalties for perjury in the Muggle world; and besides, I _do_ have a moral objection, just as you said. It's a legal trial, _mon cœur,_ it's not like that meeting you accompanied me to."

She frowned again. "What if I don't use legilimency on the judge, then?" she asked, "What if I use it on your father, or on his solicitor, to find out what they're going to argue?"

"Calista, no, that would still be wrong…"

"But _he's_ not going to tell the truth — you must realise that —"

"Calista, please," Gerald said, wearily, "It's not that simple; and at any rate, even if it were, I've been studying the relationship between the Muggle and wizarding justice systems _quite_ extensively of late, and there are bylaws in our own legal system that you'd be breaking, by interfering in the Muggle courts. I can't imagine quite how the Office of Magical Law Enforcement might find out, but if they _did_ , you could have your wand stripped, or worse."

He didn't feel the need to specify what _worse_ was; he knew by the shadow that slipped across her features that she understood.

She sighed, heavily.

"I wish I'd thought of it earlier," she mused, "I could have tried to brew _Felix Felicis_ for you; but I'd need months, even if I could get it right on the first try."

"Erm," Gerald blinked, and hid his expression under pretense of hunting down a wooden spoon to stir the pot's increasingly fragrant contents with. "I appreciate the thought, but that would definitely still constitute tampering by magical means; besides, the ingredients would cost a small fortune."

"Well, there isn't enough time, anyway." She leaned over the pot, and inhaled. "Soup? Is it almost finished?"

Gerald pressed his lips together briefly, before he trusted himself to reply.

"Ah, no, not quite; this is only the stock, actually."

Calista tilted her head, nose wrinkling in that tantalising manner that _still_ made him a bit dizzy, sometimes. "How long does this take to make?"

Gerald cleared his throat, and took a careful, measured step away from her; just in case.

"I'd reckon on — ah — at least another three hours. Actually, if I'm being perfectly honest, I planned this for tomorrow's dinner; we should probably order takeaway tonight."

A series of expressions crossed her face too quickly for him to have any chance of interpreting them all; he picked out surprise, and what he sincerely _hoped_ was amusement, and then —

" _Merlin's blood_ — And you think _I_ was Sorted wrong? That's easily the most Slytherin thing you've ever done."

Gerald grinned weakly, relieved that she didn't appear particularly cross. "I think I'll elect to take that as a compliment."

"It was one, obviously."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Playing Slytherin had worked out rather well for him, Gerald reflected hours later, as he positioned his arm between Calista's pillow and the curve of her neck; she shifted, curling her body even closer to his. He decided not to consider the very real possibility that she had only done so to avoid falling off the opposite edge of what was, after all, quite a small bed for two people, and he ducked his head, pressing his mouth to the crown of her hair, inhaling the crisp, vaguely floral scent of her shampoo.

" _Je t'aime, mon colibri._ "

She shifted again, and he felt her fingers reaching for his; as soon as she had them in her grasp, she squeezed them, tightly and reassuringly.

"It will be all right," she said, quietly, "Next week; it will work out."

"I hope you're correct, _mon cœur_."

"I'll still do it," she said, and she didn't have to explain what she meant, "If you change your mind, if you want me to."

" _Non, mon colibri_. It… it will be okay, without that."

If only he could truly believe that; but he had to be careful. If she knew how desperately he wished she _could_ do what she'd offered, she might very well decide to use legilimency during the trial, despite what he'd said.

 _Would it really be so awful?_ part of his mind whispered, even though _of course it would_ ;but it was like the matter earlier of Sirius Black; once he tried not to think about it, it was _all_ he could think about.

Since she was of age, and was no longer subject to the Trace, and since he had already gotten away with using legilimency on his father once, the odds probably _were_ astronomically low that she would be caught; and even though he really _did_ have a moral objection, he couldn't help but think about what she'd said, about his father. She was right; he was hardly likely to play fair, and wouldn't accepting her help, to keep his father from hurting Terry, be choosing the lesser of two evils?

"Well," Calista murmured, rather sleepily, "I could always just hex him after the trial, if he wins." She shifted again, and then: "Or poison him."

" _Non, ma chérie_ ," he said again, though he was quite certain she wasn't serious; and then, something stirred in his chest. It took him a moment to realise that his heart had started beating faster, in anticipation, and another moment still to realise what he was in anticipation _of_ , what he'd decided to finally ask her.

"There is something you could do to help me, though," he said, quietly, because his mouth was quite close to her ear, "It's not directly related to the trial, but it could help me with — other things. With my father and —"

 _With yours._ He cut himself off. He still hadn't decided whether he should tell her about that.

"I'll do it," she said, "Whatever it is."

He released a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding, and squeezed her hand briefly, already relieved.

"I should have asked ages ago," he admitted, wondering precisely why he hadn't, "I want you to teach me teach me to be a better Occlumens."

All at once, everywhere that she had felt soft and warm — her hands, her hair, her back curled against him — she went hard, and stiff, and cold. His fingers felt like ice, as she dropped them, suddenly, exposing them to the air.

"No."

It took several seconds for Gerald's mind to catch up; once it did, he propped himself up on his elbow, utterly bewildered. "What do you think I've just said?"

"I know what you said," her voice was like ice water, suddenly, and she was sitting up in bed, intent on disentangling her legs from the blanket. "And I said no; I won't do it. Don't ever ask me again."

He blinked, partly in confusion, and partly against the sudden bright light, as she snatched her wand off the nightstand and lit it.

"This bloody blanket," she muttered, clutching and tearing it away from her legs, by the light of her wand.

" _Why_?" Gerald asked, tugging at the other end of the blanket, to help her; as soon as she was free, she bounded out of the bed, and stood several paces away, eyeing him warily. "It makes sense; you're so much stronger in the art than I am, and —"

" _Of course I am_ ," Calista practically hissed, from across the room, "That's the whole _point_ ; that's why I can't."

"Erm." He rubbed his eyes; her wandlight was practically searing them. "I'm afraid I'm not following."

"Don't you realise how I'd have to teach you? I'd need to —" she shivered, but he didn't dare approach her, with the blanket or otherwise, "I'd need to enter your mind; I'd need to use legilimency on you; I'd need to _attack_ you."

Gerald took in a slow breath, and let it out, all the while watching her carefully. "I know that," he finally said quietly, "And I admit, it's not ideal, but I think the benefit —"

"No," she said again, with utter finality, "I won't do it."

" _Please_ ," he said, voice strained and thin, "I need — I need to _know_ that I can defend myself adequately, and I don't think I really can, now; and it isn't _just_ for me, you know — some of what I need to guard are _your_ secrets."

"From who?" she asked, "Who would try to —"

He saw a terrible expression slide over her face, in the same instant that her spell, and the light from her wand faded, leaving them both in darkness, and in a sudden, charged silence.

"Uncle Lucius," she said grimly, into it, "That's who you mean, isn't it?"

"Yes," he said, cautiously, "And also —"

"I'll kill him," she said darkly, cutting him off, "How _dare_ he — it was bad enough when he attempted to read _me_ , but at least I —"

Her voice stopped briefly, and when it came again, it sounded slightly closer. "Did he learn anything?"

"I don't know," he said, and he wasn't actually talking about her Uncle Lucius at all, "I don't think so; but I — well, I got the impression that he wasn't trying particularly hard."

"I'll kill him," she said again, and then: "Just — we won't go there anymore, to the manor," she said, "You'll never have to see him, and if for some reason you _do_ run into him, just don't make eye contact, whatever you do — he's not strong enough to penetrate your mind without it."

Gerald felt his mouth pull down.

"I don't… I don't think that's going to work." How could it, when it was _Severus_ he was truly worried about?

"It has to," she said, and he had never heard her sound so formidable, so utterly unmoveable in all the time he had known her, _colibri de marbre_ that she always had been. "I meant what I said; don't ever ask me again."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista couldn't even make it to Friday, before she broke her own promise. On Tuesday, her fingers clutched at the knocker of her Aunt Andromeda's front door, hands gold and gut in a slithering, writhing knot. What the hell was wrong with her?

Her aunt's brows arched to see Calista standing at her threshold, but she ushered her in, nevertheless.

"Calista, sweetheart, are you ill —?"

"What? No."

Her aunt frowned, and lifted her hand. If it had been Narcissa, she would have felt a cool, light touch at her forehead, and a moment later, she would have been wrapped in a reassuring, albeit perfumed, hug; but she and Andromeda didn't quite have that ease with each other, and instead, her aunt's hand faltered, and dropped.

"You're looking peaky," Andromeda said, "I can — I can make you some soup, if you'd like…?

Calista swallowed a harsh, humourless excuse for a laugh. "No thank you," she said, "I've had quite enough soup, recently."

"I see." Andromeda frowned briefly. "Well — Dora isn't home yet; I think she's out looking at flats, actually."

Calista blinked. "Flats?"

Andromeda nodded. "She's been saving for her own place for quite some time — surely, she must have told you, what with all the evenings you've been spending here?"

Calista felt something catch in her throat; when she finally swallowed it, it burned all the way down. Had Tonks said anything to her? She had no idea, she hadn't listened to anything lately that any of them had been telling her, except for…

"Erm," Calista said, hoping she managed to sound casual, "Sirius is around, though, I suppose?"

"He is," Andromeda said slowly, "He's sleeping upstairs, I believe."

"Oh." She knew she should drop the subject; but she had already made the wretched decision to come here, so she pressed on: "At six o'clock in the evening?"

"He's had a difficult few nights," Andromeda said, softly, "I'm sure you can imagine… the terrors of a place like Azkaban don't leave one so easily."

"He… he couldn't sleep?" she asked, "Was it —" she swallowed another bitter lump, "Was it a nightmare?"

"I expect so," her aunt said, "They seem to plague him particularly around the weekends. I expect by tomorrow he'll be more or less himself, again."

Unbidden, Gerald's words slipped into her mind; and once they had done so, she couldn't let them go.

 _Whenever you come from your aunt's house, it's like you've just woken up from a nightmare, and I have to wait until Wednesday for you to seem all right again._

"I — I'm sorry," Calista heard herself say, and then, at her aunt's quizzical look: "I mean, I know what that's like."

Andromeda nodded, not unsympathetically. An increasingly awkward silence stretched out between them, and then —

"Calista. Come with me; there's something I think perhaps you should see; something I think you should know."

Calista lifted her gaze to her aunt's face, but it was impassive; it struck her that perhaps it was not _only_ from her father's side that she had inherited her aptitude for Occlumency. Wordlessly, she followed her aunt, through the dining room and into the quiet sanctuary of the study beyond.

Andromeda tapped her wand to a locked drawer in the mahogany desk; after shuffling through a series of papers that all appeared to be mouldy and blank — but of course Calista knew better by now — she selected one, and very carefully placed it into Calista's hands.

Instantly, words spread across the page; the writing was heavy, and spiky, and quite familiar, after having read a particular letter in that hand as many times as she had.

 _I think you've got more guard dogs than you know_ , her letter had said, but this one was quite different, though it was still a letter.

It was addressed to Andromeda; the first few lines made brief reassurances of safety and of being well-hidden, but the tone quickly shifted.

 _I don't wish this darkness on anyone. I don't know that I would last through it myself, if my goals weren't clear, but fortunately for me they are. I have to find Pettigrew. I have to protect Harry. I have to make sure he knows that his mother and father loved him dearly, even when the horrors in my mind make me question whether anything as good and true as love could be real._

Calista felt the writhing mass in her gut solidify; it was heavy enough, suddenly, that she truly was in danger of becoming ill; but still, her eyes carried themselves across the acrid lines of increasingly hurried, frantic writing.

 _I hear them screaming, in my head, nearly every night, though I wasn't there the night they died. Perhaps that's the reason I almost crave it, sometimes. Perhaps I deserve to hear it, over and over, for handing them over to a traitor. I hear Harry crying out for them; I hear Moony howling in pain, writhing in pain under an endless series of full moons, because he's alone now, too. I even hear the girl sometimes, your sister's girl — I suppose when the dementors have sufficiently wrung the rest of my pitiful memories out of me — and I know they all cry out because of me, because of my mistakes, because I could not save any of them, or at least not soon enough._

 _So don't tell me, Dromeda, that I shouldn't write to Harry so often. Don't tell me it's risky. Don't tell me he's all right without me. I might be in hiding, I might be a convict. I certainly am a wretch, I think — but if there's any worth left in me, let me use it to aid the son of the dearest friend I ever had. Let me have one reason to keep this worthless body alive._

 _Yours,_

 _Sirius_

Calista's vision blurred, and she managed not to spit out the bitterness in her mouth only by clenching her jaw so tightly that it made her temples ache. After a moment, slender fingers reached to take the parchment from her, and she let her own hands drop to her sides, trembling.

She was granted a brief and merciful respite, while her aunt quite conspicuously and quite deliberately busied herself returning the paper to where it had come from, and locking the drawer; it was only a few seconds, but it was enough for her to dash the burning moisture from her eyes, to tighten her jaw even further, to shutter her expression.

"Sirius wrote me that letter perhaps a month after I knew he was innocent. I knew he'd only narrowly avoided being Kissed by the dementors at Hogwarts, and I was afraid that his contact with his godson would draw attention to his whereabouts."

"I…" Calista managed to unhinge her jaw, "I don't understand why you showed that to me."

"Don't you?" her aunt asked, softly, and then: "Something tells me that I won't be able talk you out of asking questions that only hurt yourself; but I suppose I hope you have enough empathy to stop, when you're also hurting someone else."

"I don't — I — that's not what I mean to do."

Andromeda smiled sadly. "I know, sweetheart. I know what you're asking, and why you're asking; but I need to ask you to stop, for the sake of two people that I care for very much."

Calista felt her mouth twitch, but for a moment, she couldn't force any more words out of it.

"I miss seeing you smile, when you come here," her aunt said, gently, "I miss pretending not to notice you and my daughter drinking a bit too much and giggling over — over boys, or Quidditch, or whatever it is you two used to go on about, up there."

Something in her aunt's kindle, casual tone loosed a stone from the mass in her gut.

"It wasn't Quidditch," she managed, a good deal more weakly than she liked, "It... _definitely_ wasn't Quidditch."

"Well," Andromeda said, shifting towards her; and this time, she took Calista utterly by surprise, when she _did_ wrap both of her arms around her niece in a hug that was somehow felt uncomfortably tight, uncomfortably long. "Whatever it was, it certainly used to sound amusing."

She ached, suddenly, for the familiar affection of her _other_ aunt; the one who knew precisely how tightly and for how long Calista would allow herself to be held; the one that almost certainly would know that it was time, now, to talk about something else.

Andromeda didn't know, though; she didn't know that Calista was a well-meaning touch, or a soft, kindly look away from shutting down; didn't know that the quiet study, the sea of spiky, heavy words, and the lingering grip of hands at her shoulders felt suddenly like manacles. She didn't know how badly Calista wanted, suddenly, to run.

"I —" _I need to go_ ; she wrenched herself free from her aunt's grip, and felt the tell-tale ratcheting of her own heart; for the second time since she'd arrived, she asked herself _what the hell was wrong with her?_

"Calista," her aunt said, and at last, she took a measured step back, and Calista could breathe again, "I want you to know — I want you to understand — if there's anything _I_ can do, anything I can tell you that might help, then I will."

 _Anything_? That reminded Calista of what Gerald has asked, what she'd promised and then immediately revoked, once she'd understood.

A sick, cold feeling crept up her throat, from the pit of her stomach.

"All right, then," she said, "I want you to teach me your charm, for the papers; how to work it, and how to undo it."

The charm, she knew, was how Andromeda had always kept her secrets; how she protected herself, and those she held dear; and just like Calista's occlumency, it was a skill best not shared.

She braced herself with a perverse satisfaction for a reaction rather like the one she'd given Gerald; perhaps her aunt would even throw her out —

Andromeda smirked. "Well," she said, "It's about time; I was beginning to think you'd never ask."

The weight inside her suddenly evaporated, leaving an equally jarring emptiness in its wake.

" _What?_ You're actually going to teach me? Even if it means I can break _your_ charm?"

Her aunt nodded, and as if to prove it, she carefully withdrew her wand from her pocket.

"Of course I will," she said, "After all, it's one thing to be able to protect myself; but what good does it really do, if I cannot teach the ones I love to be protected, too?"


	11. Trial

**11\. Trial**

The day that Gerald was scheduled to face his father in family court, Severus was inexplicably home for breakfast. On her way downstairs, Calista could smell something cooking. She hurried into the kitchen.

"Gerald, what are you doing here, you need to be prep — oh. It's you."

"Really, Calista. There's no need to offer me such a warm welcome," her father said drily, letting a plate clatter onto the counter with decidedly more force than could be attributed to mere gravity, "It's not as if I rearranged my day and called in a favour from the Headmaster to be here at precisely the same time I'm meant to be teaching my first year Hufflepuff class."

Calista's brow went up. "Seriously? You let them off class? And wouldn't that be the Ravenclaw class, too?"

"It's nice to see you, too," Severus snarled half-heartedly, shifting the plate from the counter to the table with even greater force. Unfazed, Calista slipped under his outstretched arm, reaching the coffee pot in a stride and a half.

It was only when she slid a full mug to his customary spot at the table that Severus softened somewhat.

"Of course I didn't let them off class," he said, seemingly offended at the very idea, "I rescheduled it."

"To when?"

"Four o'clock."

Calista blinked. "That's going to go into the dinner hour."

Severus smiled thinly. "There will still be thirty minutes for them to eat, assuming I don't have to keep anyone after class to mop up another mistake."

"But _Hufflepuff_? Judging by everything Tonks has told me, they don't exactly like to miss dinner."

"Then they will need to be very careful not to make a mistake," her father said, quite carelessly, and then: "Do you want to talk about this afternoon, or shall we continue to discuss timetables?"

"Oh, timetables, definitely." Calista said, digging into her plate of eggs. A needle of anxiety prickled at her forehead and she pushed it severely down. She still had to make it through a half day of work, and _besides_ , if she didn't keep calm, how could she expect Gerald to?

"Whatever you are planning today to help Mr — to help Gerald," Severus said, evenly, "It is of utmost importance that you are not suspected of anything illegal or otherwise ah — untoward."

Calista's forehead prickled again, and then she felt her stomach harden. She set down her fork.

"I suppose I won't be suspected," she said, "As I won't be _doing_ anything — Gerald doesn't want me to. Something about honouring an oath that will lead to absolutely no consequences if he _doesn't_ honour it." Her rapidly souring tone made it clear what she thought of _that_ decision. "And why did you bother asking me whether I wanted to discuss this afternoon if you were just going to go ahead and do it anyway?"

Again, Severus ignored her protest; he withdrew a sheet of parchment from his robes, and passed it across the table. "A list of relevant regulations and cases," he explained, "Gerald will have been studying a great deal of them, I think, but these are the ones you will want to have him to review this morning. You're meeting him at his home, I presume?"

"I'm going to work," Calista said, shortly; her stomach clenched painfully, unease forming a pit within it.

Severus' brow lifted, hand still poised over the table, offering the the parchment. "Do I have the date wrong?" he asked in a soft, silky tone that indicated he very much knew he didn't.

"The hearing doesn't start until two," Calista said, defensively, "And I don't think —"

 _I don't think Gerald really wants to see me, just now._ Their argument, a few days ago, had evolved into their worst yet; Calista couldn't possibly do what he was asking, but he couldn't seem to understand why. In the end, she had stormed out of her room to avoid having to explain any further, and he'd left her home shortly after that, and they had hardly spoken since.

"I don't think Astra would give me the whole day off," she finished, lamely, hoping her glare would be sufficient to keep any further questioning at bay.

Severus was frighteningly quiet for a moment, until, at length, he set the parchment down on the table, splaying his fingers over it, and sliding it very deliberately in her direction.

"How exceedingly disappointing," he finally said, in the sort of voice he'd once reserved for forbidden owlery trips, "As wont as you are to misdirect your anger, I did not think your character was sufficiently flawed to allow you to punish Boot so egregiously for your disagreement with me."

Calista's glare twisted into a full-fledged scowl. "I — excuse me? Precisely what the _hell_ are you talking about?"

"I didn't go," Severus said quietly. Calista blinked, against the burn of impending tears as much as anything else, though she wasn't quite sure _why_ she suddenly felt like crying, or why he was so cross with her.

 _You know why_ , an insidious little voice in her mind said, _He knows._

It wasn't possible; she hadn't said anything, and she _knew_ her mind hadn't betrayed her. And yet, she was hard-pressed to think of anything else that would put such a chill in his tone.

"It occurred to me," Severus went on, "That perhaps you had not been entirely truthful."

Calista's heart stopped for what felt like a small eternity; when it started again, it felt like it had migrated to her throat.

"I —" Air seemed suddenly to be in scarce supply, but she scrounged for it, anyway. "It isn't — I had reasons," she began, "I know it doesn't make sense to you, but I —"

"I suppose we will have to discuss this," Severus said, and if it were possible, he sounded even more loathe to the prospect than she felt, "But you, at least, have more pressing concerns today. I hope the knowledge that I returned to Hogwarts on Tuesday rather than calling on Mrs. Yaxley is enough to put a temporary halt to this selfish and destructive behaviour of yours."

"I —" It almost sounded like he _didn't_ know, like he'd been talking about something else entirely; but _selfish and destructive?_ Weren't those the precise words her Aunt Andromeda had used to describe her conversations with Sirius?

"I don't suppose Gerald will have a very difficult time proving his case with or without the honour of your presence," her father went on, in a tone that was still sharply admonishing, "But unless I have been severely deluded, he is very much counting on having it."

"Of _course_ I'm going," Calista said, snapping at once to the reality of what he'd been saying, of what she was hearing; he _didn't know_. It seemed that he really thought she was cross with him over _Mrs. Yaxley_ , and that she was taking it out on Gerald, by refusing to go to the hearing, "I never _wasn't_ going to go; I'm scheduled to leave work at one, and I'm going to meet him outside the courthouse. I have the coordinates."

Now that she was evidently off the hook for her covert meetings with Sirius, the hard pit in her stomach was beginning to dissolve. Why, then, was a sour, burning sort of feeling taking its place?

Severus didn't respond; he merely looked at her, black eyes boring into hers across the familiar kitchen table.

"It's nothing to do with you why I'm not going to see him first," Calista heard herself say, the words burning her throat as they bubbled acridly out of her gut, "It's — we — well, we're arguing."

Severus remained utterly unmoved; he didn't even blink. Pressure built up, from her gut to her throat, and the sour feeling crawled its way into her mouth, making her cheeks ache.

"He wants me to teach him _Occlumency_ ," she burst out, aggrieved, and she found that moving her mouth eased the ache, "And he doesn't understand — doesn't _care_ — why I can't."

"Ah," Severus said, and at last, she was relieved from the intensity of his gaze, as he rose, carrying his half-empty plate to the basin. His words were as fluid as his movement as he added, over his shoulder: "And why, precisely, can't you?"

Calista gaped. "Why can't I?" she echoed, "Are you mad?"

"Not as far as I know," her father replied dryly, and it struck her that although he still sounded far from pleased, there was something suddenly lighter in his tone, more in line with how he'd been when she first walked into the kitchen. That settled it, then; he _didn't_ know; and she had almost needlessly admitted it to him, in her haste to defend her actions.

"I'd have to enter his mind," Calista said, simultaneously pushing Sirius out of her mind, and her mostly untouched plate away from her. She did the latter with decidedly more force than was strictly necessary.

"I'd have to test him," she went on, aggrieved. "I'd have to _attack_ him."

"How courteous of you to explain to me how one teachers Occlumency."

"How can you not see the problem with that?" she practically yelled, hearing her voice rising in disbelief, "I could — I could betray his trust. I could could damage his mind!"

"You could," Severus agreed, turning to face her again, "If you chose to."

"Of course I wouldn't _choose_ to, but what if I did something inadvertently? Besides, he doesn't — he has no idea what it actually feels like to have someone enter your mind, like I'd need to, over and over. It's not _pleasant_. It's awful. After everything else he's already miraculously managed to accept me for, I'm not going to have him start to hate me after all for _that_."

Severus' black eyes were levelled on her again, and she met his gaze squarely. She'd meant what she'd said; it wasn't worth the risk.

"Very well," Severus said, at last, "It is your skill, and so it is your right to refuse to share it."

"It's not that I don't want to help him," Calista said, feeling guilt press down on her shoulders, "I would, if there was another way."

Severus stepped closer to the table again. His expression was inscrutable, even to her. She saw his hand move, and for a moment she thought he meant to place it on her shoulder, to comfort her; she would have liked that reassuring weight to replace the weight of her guilt, but instead, he merely shoved her plate back in her direction.

"Eat," he told her, "And then call Astra. Tell her you won't be in today."

Shoving her plate back put the parchment he'd placed in the middle of the table squarely back in her view. She reached for it, scanning the list of statutes and cases; most of them were references to Muggle law that meant next to nothing to her, but a few of them she recognised as belonging to wizarding law.

She set the list down beside her plate, and picked up her fork; now that her father had agreed that she was not obligated to help Gerald with Occlumency, it struck her as obvious that she should at least help him as much as she could, with everything else. The sour ache in her stomach receded, and she began to fill the hollow pit in her stomach with breakfast.

She wrinkled her nose, examining the list as she ate. It was quite extensive.

"How do you even know about all of these, anyway?" she asked her father, around a mouthful of eggs. In reply, Severus turned on the kitchen tap, and became suddenly absorbed in cleaning his dishes.

She returned to her breakfast, and to the list. After a few moments, she'd finished with the former, and as she was absorbed in the latter, she sensed her father's presence at her side again. He took her plate, and set it in the basin; she noticed with a half-hearted scowl that he didn't wash _hers_.

"Calista."

Something in his tone made her look up sharply; Severus was standing in the doorway, face half-shadowed in a way that made his already angular features appear positively stark.

"Kindly advise Gerald that if you will not teach him Occlumency, I shall."

It took a moment for the explosion in her heart to make it to her head; by the time it had, by the time she'd half-risen, mouth opening in protest, Severus' cloak was whipping around the corner to the next room; by the time she found her feet and raced, panicked, into the living room, her father was already gone; the fireplace crackled tauntingly in his wake.

All at once, dread returned; it curled up in her belly, settling in as though it had known it would not be away long at all.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

"C-Calista! I'm so glad — you _were_ able to get off work, after all?"

Calista knew as soon as Gerald opened the door to his flat and ushered her in that something was wrong, despite the forced cheer in his tone.

Dread stretched out a claw, latching onto her heart the way that Yellow often snagged her robes when he was hungry; Calista did not have to peer particularly long or hard at Gerald to see the way that nervous sweat had mussed his normally neat hair, nor the darker circles ringing his eyes behind the lenses of his glasses, in stark contrast to his unusually pale skin.

Gerald snatched her hand up as soon as she was inside, and pulled her towards the living room; it was she who had to remember to shut the door behind them, snagging it behind her with hardly a second to spare before he had led her to where his mother and her friend, the policewoman, were conversing solemnly on the sofa. Terry was sprawled in the armchair across from them, scowling heavily; evidently, Flitwick _had_ managed to excuse him from school for the hearing.

"We're just — we're just preparing," Gerald told her, and she could hear the way his voice faltered, slightly. "Going over — over testimony and… and things."

Calista frowned. "Where's that woman?" she asked, referring to a reedy-looking Muggle she'd met a handful of times, who had been helping Gerald and Terry practise their responses to certain expected questions, "Your solicitor?"

"She — ah —" Gerald swallowed, and her hand slipped in his, which had gone clammy. "She won't be — that is, she isn't allowed."

"What? Isn't that how Mug —" Calista glanced at the policewoman and caught herself, "Er, how court works? Your solicitors ask you questions?"

"It — erm — yes, often that is how it works, but — erm, this time they've said…"

Gerald trailed off; Calista could see him struggling to finish his sentence; and then, glumly, Terry spoke up, from his sullen vantage of the armchair.

"Family court," the younger boy said, "Judge reckons it doesn't need to be so formal; thinks it will be better if we all talk to Dad directly."

" _What?_ Talk to him directly — but that isn't how court hearings work at all!"

"Mug — er, family court is different, sometimes," Terry told her, "Depends on the judge, and what they think of the case. The good news is, he doesn't get his solicitor, either, but…" Terry frowned, jerking his chin towards his older brother. "Don't think that's reassuring Ger much, honestly."

"I'm fine," Gerald said, very unconvincingly, "It's — I mean, I'm certain everything will be… erm, fine."

"It will be," Calista said, firmly, despite growing doubt, "The format of the hearing may have changed, but the facts haven't. He's wrong, you're right, and that's that. I'm certain there's a way to make the judge see that."

That last part, at least, was not at all dishonest; there _was_ a way. She just had to convince Gerald to let her do it.

"I've brought this list," she said, stretching her fingers into her pocket to produce her father's parchment from earlier that morning, "Of laws and statutes that my father thought might come up. Why don't we study it together, Gerald?"

She hoped he would hear the pressing note in her tone, and realise that she wanted to talk to him alone; mercifully, he nodded, features flooding with mild relief.

"Yes," he agreed, "Studying the laws — that's a very good idea. It should ease my mind, a bit, if nothing else. We can — we can use my room."

"Our room," Terry countered, seemingly by reflex; and also by evident reflex, Gerald rolled his eyes, before he snatched Calista's hand up again, twining his fingers so tightly with hers that she nearly dropped the parchment before haphazardly shoving it back towards her pocket.

He asked for the parchment once they were in his room, but again, as soon as she'd handed it to him, he reached for her with his free hand, as if her fingers had suddenly become a totem of luck, or protection. Calista squeezed his hand, and frowned when she could still feel the trembling of his fingers; the parchment shook in his other hand.

"I know what you said before," Calista said quietly, urgently, by his ear, "But things have changed — the _rules_ have changed — and I can still help. I can read the judge, I can read your father —"

Gerald shook his head, quite forcefully, even as his grip on her hand tightened. "I — no, Calista, I can't let you. It would be far too —"

" _I don't care!_ ," Calista hissed in frustration, "I don't care about the stupid Muggle oath, and neither will that arsehole —"

"I don't think I do anymore, either," Gerald admitted, cutting her off with uncharacteristic grimness, "But I still can't let you take that risk for me. Believe me, I've thought about it all night, since I found out about the solicitors, and I just _can't_. If Crouch's department caught wind, having your wand stripped would be the _least_ of the potential consequences I'd be asking you to face."

Sour panic rose up again in her gut, but she swallowed hard against the burn of it. "I know what I'm doing. They wouldn't find out; even my father guessed I might do something like this, and he didn't tell me not to; he only told me not to be _suspected._ "

"It isn't worth it," Gerald said, firmly, despite the clammines of his hand in hers and the obvious tremor of the parchment in his fingers. "The — if he wins, the worst that can happen is — is he'll be able to legally write to Terry, and Terry doesn't want to respond to him now, anyway, so… so really, it will all be fine."

He swallowed; Calista frowned, eying him critically.

"No," she said, loathe to remind him, but feeling that she had to," The _worst_ that could happen is for the judge to reverse the prior custody judgment, leaving the door open for a new one —"

Gerald opened his mouth, but Calista pressed on: "- and even though Terry's old enough to decide where he wants to live by Muggle rules, there's no guarantee the Wizengamot would go the same way, if your father brought the case there — and you and I _both_ know that the Wizengamot sides with the wizarding parent ninety percent of the time, if there's a dispute. At the very least, he'll probably get access to Terry's money; and then, of course, there's the fact that we already know that arsehole wants to accuse you _and_ your mum of keeping him from Terry unlawfully. I'd say all that's a bit worse than him sending a few unopened letters — which, by the way, he'd be able to send to your home address, if the Muggle judge demands you to reveal it, Obfuscation Order or no."

If it were possible, Gerald seemed to have gone even paler; but he set his jaw stubbornly, and shook his head again.

"I — I still won't let you intervene. I'll — I'll ask them to bar you from the room, if you try —"

"Gerald, you're being unreasonable!"

"No," he insisted, and suddenly, somehow, they were arguing again. " _You_ are. It doesn't matter if it's family court, it's still a _legal proceeding,_ and the penalty for interfering with the Muggle legal system — don't you understand what could happen?"

"We both know the odds of being caught, let alone charged, in a case like this —"

"We both know?" Gerald echoed, and then, voice cracking: " You want to go on about things we _both know_ could happen, how about the fact that you could wind up in bloody _Azkaban_ , if you were caught — you really want me to accept the risk that you could be forced to share a prison cell with —"

He stopped, but it was far too late.

" _Fuck you,_ " Calista practically choked; the hand that she yanked from his ended up pressed hard to her mouth almost immediately after. She wasn't certain whether she intended to stuff her epithet back in, or if it was simply instinct against the burning feeling crawling its way once more into the back of her mouth.

"I'm sorry," Gerald said hoarsely, and he reached for with an air of desperation, "I'm so sorry — I didn't mean —"

"Didn't you, though?" she heard the words twist out of her throat, even as she twisted away from his arms, "It's — but don't worry — she's in maximum security, and Sirius told me they don't have shared cells in that unit, so you're — you're worrying about nothing —"

She pressed her hands to her mouth again; _Merlin_ , she was about to be sick, she could feel it burning its way from her gut straight to the back of her teeth; a bleak, black cloud was rising in her mind, too, threatening to cut her off from reason, and there was nothing she could do to stop any of it —

 _Yes, there is._ Hadn't she just been trying to convince Gerald of the same thing, before everything had gone so disastrously wrong? Calista wrenched her mouth open, and forced herself to take in a mouthful of air, despite the sudden protesting ache of panic in her lungs.

She performed a familiar call, in her mind; _like calls to like_ , her father had told her once, and it still held true, even now: once she had plucked at a single thread of the potential that lived in her mind, the rest of it came naturally, if with considerable effort, as if she were lifting a vast blanket by its corner.

Fear, grief, anguish, rage: as volatile, as wild as they were, she knew they could be corralled, because if they could not, she never would have produced the Patronus that had quite literally saved her soul, not so many months ago. Once more, she forced them all back into a dank, dismal corner of her mind, bitterly aware that they would fester until she could find the time to deal with them properly.

Still; for now, she could shut them out. She took another breath, feeling the chill blankness that settled over her features as if it were a literal mask.

"Calista, please, _mon cœur,_ forgive me."

"Okay," Calista said evenly, even though it wasn't; "I forgive you," even though she didn't, "Now, let's forget about it, for now. Let's concentrate on — on that list."

She could feel his eyes on her, concerned, undoubtedly probing, but she knew with absolute certainty there was nothing to fear; in that moment, she doubted that even her father could have seen through her facade. Except…

"I can tell it's not all right," Gerald said, quietly, "Or rather — I suppose I can't tell, but I know you well enough to know it can't be."

Calista blinked. "I'm fine," she said, another lie. She gestured insistently to the parchment that had fallen to the floor by his feet.

"I just —" Gerald frowned, and snatched for the paper; his questing fingers managed it on the third try. "I never should have put it that way, but there really _is_ a penalty of imprisonment for —"

"Just stop," she said, quietly, and despite the fact that she didn't want to talk anymore, didn't want to even _stay_ , she made herself sit beside him again, and pointed, woodenly, at an item halfway down the list.

"This one," she said, "My father seemed to think this one would be important."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

The courtroom was small, brightly lit, and also incredibly warm; none of which stopped Gerald from imagining a cold, cavernous room, or the sea of hostile faces around its edges.

Here, in the small courtroom, Gerald was seated on a raised platform; and still, he felt as if everyone else was towering over him.

He did well enough, answering the judge's preliminary questions; he answered as completely and honestly as he could, recounting approximate dates and relating the scant details of his father's ministrations against him and his brother that were suitable for retelling in a room full of Muggles.

He made his first mistake the moment he was released from the stand after this first round of questioning; when they told him he could return to his seat, he'd made a beeline for the second row of the galley, where Calista was sitting.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his father standing, and then he felt a sudden, firm grip on his elbow; he yelped, and yanked his arm away —

"Excuse me," the court officer said, brow curled now in an expression Gerald decided it was best not to try and interpret, "You've got to stay up here, with the other witnesses, in case you're called back before the recess."

"Oh," Gerald stammered, unable to stop himself from glancing over his shoulder. "I was just — I —"

Behind him, his father was settling into the same chair that Gerald had just vacated. A shadow slipped briefly across the older man's face, or perhaps it was a satisfied smirk.

"I wanted to speak with her for a moment," Gerald managed, gesturing towards Calista, while forcing himself to meet the officer's gaze steadily. "I — I'm happy to return to the table afterwards."

"You'll be able to speak to whoever you want during the recess," the officer said, a bit impatiently. "Now, return to your seat; you're holding up the proceedings."

Gerald felt his cheeks warm; he just managed to lock eyes with Calista for an instant before he obliged, and turned, but what he saw did little to reassure him. Calista's expression was even and calm, gaze aloof; it was the same look she'd worn for much of their trip to France, the same expression she'd worn around his mother the first few times they'd met.

He knew that she was only being careful not to reveal herself, in room full of Muggles; he knew that the quiet blankness was only a mask; and yet, he still wanted so desperately to see a break in it; an encouraging or sympathetic smile, perhaps. Even pity would have been preferable; he found that when he turned his back on her, forcing himself to look grimly up at the stand, he felt very much alone.

There was another small movement beside him, and suddenly his mother's hand overlaid his on the table. He glanced at her, and it was _she_ who offered a tiny, encouraging smile, despite the wariness in her eyes.

Gerald swallowed, and straightened his back slightly.

 _I won't let you down, Mum_ , he said inwardly, because Calista had been right; even though this was a Muggle courtroom, the stakes extended so much further. He had to do his best here, so that his mother would not need to fear whatever repercussions his father might seek, in the Wizengamot.

Despite the horror that the Wizengamot represented for him, it only took minutes before he rather wished they _were_ in front of that venerable audience, for in that setting, he would have been allowed to interject, when his father spouted outright lies, and he seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of them.

"I'm the first to admit that I made many mistakes, when the lads were younger," Brandon said, in a tone that struck Gerald as more oily than regretful, "I was taken by the drink, you see; took me a long time to realise what I'd done, what I'd been missing…"

 _Money_ , Gerald wanted to yell, _That's what he realised he might be missing._ Instead, he clenched his hands together on his lap, to stop them from shaking visibly.

"How long after Ms. Underwood filed the protective order did you enter treatment?" the judge asked.

"Actually, sir, I didn't enroll in a program," Brandon said; it struck Gerald that it was perhaps the first true thing the man had said all day. It didn't last long.

"It only took me a couple of months of missing my boys before I knew I had to stop," Brandon went on, "And I just _did_. I wanted to sort things out with Tina, but she'd gone and moved the boys away. Didn't leave a forwarding address anywhere, 'sfar as I could ever find."

"Did you attempt to challenge the order in court?"

"Of course I did," Brandon said, "Strangest thing, though, seems no one could find where Tina had gone."

"I see; but you did manage to get in contact with your eldest son shortly after that, didn't you?"

"It took me a couple of years," Brandon said, conveniently neglecting to mention that he'd been in wizard prison for most of it, "But yes, eventually I was able to write to Gerry at the very same boarding school I had gone to as a boy."

"Raven's Claw Academy for Gifted Children," the judge mused, glancing down at his paperwork, "Yes, I read that in your file. Surely you realised that the protective order keeping you from your sons applied when they were in school as well?"

Brandon ducked his head, the very picture of contrition.

"I am sworn to honesty," the older man acknowledged, "And so I must admit I did know that; but Your Honour, I was desperate. I missed my sons so much —"

A soft hiss startled Gerald; he was further startled to realise it had come from _him_. The judge cast him a brief look, but Brandon went on, recapturing the judge's attention.

"I had tried many times to appeal the order, or to write directly to Tina to ask her about the boys, but _no one_ could seem to find them, not even the magistrate that had filed the original order. In fact…"

Brandon paused, reflectively; and then, his eyes locked unmistakably on Gerald's. A twist of a shadow crossed his pallid face again.

"If I didn't know better, Your Honour," Brandon said earnestly, "I'd have sworn that my family had disappeared _like magic_."

Gerald's face flooded with heat, and then went cold, all in the span of two or three seconds. He felt his entire body shiver, and for an instant, he couldn't concentrate on what the judge was saying; something about fanciful speculation. It didn't matter. What mattered was the predatory _grin_ his father was staring him down with.

This look, the judge caught, but instead of reprimanding the man, he _smiled_ at him, sympathetically.

"I imagine it's quite emotional for you to be seeing your sons again after all this time, and all grown up," he said, to which Brandon agreed emphatically.

"Oh, yes," he agreed, "Especially my Gerry — you know, he's the spitting image of myself when I was his age…"

Gerald clenched his fists again, steeling himself against the strange, hollow feeling that was slowly filling his head. _I'm not like you_ , he thought grimly, clinging to the words, _I'm not like you in the least._

"Although," Brandon reflected, cocking his head slightly, "I do believe he might be a touch shorter — I'll have to stand beside him and see."

Gerald felt his throat closing up; _surely_ , the judge would see the mocking, the threat for what it was, and intervene? But no — the judge merely chuckled.

"Exact opposite with my son," he said, good-naturedly, "Lad's been taller than me since he was sixteen. At any rate — tell me more about the letters you exchanged with Gerry there — you've written each other quite frequently these last few years, haven't you?"

Perhaps it didn't matter that Gerald was not allowed to protest his father's testimony at this stage in the hearing; it seemed that for every angry protest that came into his head, his father had a matching barb or threat; and no matter that each felt to Gerald like the pressing, dull tip of a wand between his ribs — to the judge, it seemed that every word Brandon said was merely an indication of how dearly he'd missed his 'beloved' sons.

The story his father related was a clever interpretation of the facts; and despite Gerald refusing to sign the document his father's solicitor had presented him, the day Calista had warned him against it, Brandon evidently _had_ provided copies of several of Gerald's letters to the judge. He referenced them liberally in his recounting, and he even _thanked_ Gerald directly, for keeping him updated on the rest of the family.

"Thank you, Mr. Boot," the judge said at last, when Gerald felt like drowning in disbelief; if each of his father's lies were a drop of seawater, then surely an ocean wave was cresting over them all now, ready to sweep them all away.

"It's quite clear to me," the judge said, rifling through the papers on his podium, "That you genuinely miss and care for your sons, now."

Gerald tried to swallow and couldn't; there was a terrifying moment where it seemed as if he'd also forgotten how to breathe, and then, at last —

"Are you really so easily deceived?"

Gerald gasped, suddenly choking on an abundance of air; like everyone else at the front of the room, he turned to look behind him, at the figure of a girl with long black hair and a derisively curling lip.

There were several voices at once, and a flurry of motion; both the judge and the court officer were reprimanding Calista's outburst, and Brandon was saying something, too — but it was Calista that Gerald heard, voice cutting as cleanly through the courtroom as her father's could slice through a noisy classroom:

"Nearly every word out of his mouth is a lie — so much for swearing an oath —"

 _Calista, no_. Gerald knew he ought to stop her; and yet, it was such a wild _relief_ to her someone calling out his father's lies —

"Shut it, Calista."

Terry's voice was sharp with warning — an instant later, the judge's gavel cracked fiercely over all of their voices, and Gerald saw Calista flinch at the sound; how odd love was that despite everything he was facing in that moment, he had a fierce and sudden urge to walk away from this entire thing and go and comfort _her._

"Young lady, what is your name and relationship to the parties in this hearing?" the judge asked Calista, cutting the silence that had followed on the heels of his gavel banging. The court officer had already approached the end of the row Calista was sitting in, visibly prepared to escort her out.

"Calista Snape," she said, far more evenly than he was expecting, "I'm —" she paused, and Gerald thought he saw something curiously sharp in her gaze suddenly, "I'm a family friend. And I — I apologise for my outburst. It won't happen again."

Gerald blinked, and in that fraction of a second, she had transformed to marble once more.

Miraculously, the judge seemed mollified by her apology. He frowned, but motioned the officer back.

"Take your seat, Miss Snape. This is your first and last warning, before you are ejected from the galley."

"If I may, Your Honour," Brandon interjected solicitously, "I'm familiar with this — ah, _young lady_. She has quite a history of instigating trouble between my sons and I, I'm afraid —"

The judge shifted his gaze sharply to Brandon; Gerald's throat was suddenly burning with words he could not say.

"I suspect it's a jealousy issue; you know how these young girls are, when they fancy a lad — and who can blame her, eh, Gerry's got his father's good looks — but perhaps it _would_ be best if she were dismissed."

A few people in the galley chuckled; the judge, mercifully, did not. He cut a brief glance at Brandon, and then he peered through his spectacles at Gerald.

"I'll ask the younger Mr. Boot," he said, and then: "Would you like the young lady dismissed from the courtroom?"

"No, Your Honour, I wouldn't." He tried to imitate her steadiness, although he felt very little of it himself, and perhaps it worked; the judge nodded.

"Very well," he said dismissively, as if it hardly troubled him either way, "Miss Snape can stay, as long as she can behave. Now then, back to the matter of these letters…"

The judge frowned. Gerald reviewed his arguments in his mind, reminding himself of the important points to mention once he had a chance to rebut his father's testimony. He had responded in order to keep his father from harassing Terry instead; he'd kept his letters civil to avoid antagonizing him for the same reason; and no, the letters were _not_ evidence that he believed his father had changed, nor did they discount any of the countless abuses the man had subjected him to.

"I read in your pre-hearing filing that you said you wrote many of these letters to try and keep your father from reaching out to your younger brother," the judge said, and Gerald nodded, doing his best to keep the swarming of nerves in his gut under control.

"That's correct, Your Honour."

The judge nodded.

"I can understand your mindset, when you began replying to the letters," the judge conceded, "After all, you had hardly seen your father in several years, and your memories of him were not altogether pleasant."

"I — yes, that's correct."

"Of course, now we know that he's been in contact with Terry anyway; they've both admitted to that."

Gerald blinked. It sounded as if the judge were siding with him, recognising his father's faults. Why, then, was the nervous swarm in his insides beginning to feel like a mass of stinging wasps?

"Looking at these letters here — and actually, I do want a closer look — it seems as if you wrote more and more, as time went on. In fact, I'd think you'd reconciled on your own, if not for the fact that you're all standing here in front of me today."

"N-no, Your Honour, that's not —"

The judge lifted a hand for silence, and smiled genially. Gerald felt the swarming, stinging mass in his gut solidify, and the weight of it created a genuine fear that he might be ill all over the witness table.

"It seems to me that there have been some communication failures, between all of you," the judge went on, "And I'm not certain that any of the questions I have are going to resolve that. To that end, I'm going to call a brief recess of thirty minutes. During that time, I'm going to take a closer look at these letters, and when I return, I'm going to mediate a discussion between father and sons."

 _What?_ It was as if the floor had dropped out beneath Gerald's chair, and taken the rest of the courtroom with it; instead of the chipped wooden furniture and the bright, fluorescent lights, Gerald was surrounded by a vast, expanding darkness and looming, hooded figures.

"Thank you very much, Your Honour," Brandon Boot was saying, at once from faraway and all too close, "I think that will be very helpful."

"No," Gerald forced the words out; it was like swimming against a ferocious tide. "I don't — I would rather continue my testimony —"

The judge smiled again. "We all want the same thing, son."

 _No, I don't think we do._ It was the only rational thought amid the growing clamour of panic in his head that Gerald could latch onto.

"We want the solution that's going to be best for your family," he heard, "And I really believe this is the way we are going to arrive at it."

The banging of the judge's gavel might have taken a hundred years to reach him; he was aware that he had flinched, this time, but he didn't think he'd reacted in real time.

"We'll recess for thirty minutes," the judge said again, "Please return promptly at four o'clock."

Someone pulled him out of the courtroom; someone guided him to a small, dim room several doors down from it, and someone was holding his hand tightly; it took him several moments before he could acknowledge or focus on any of these things.

"Gerald," a hummingbird said, by his ear, even though he had been certain a moment ago that it was his mother and his brother that had led him from the room, "It's going to be all right, and — and you're safe."

" _Mon colibri_ ," he breathed, and he felt the burn of tears in his throat, or perhaps it was of one of the nervous wasps leaving his gut, "I can't — I can't do this —"

"Yes, you can," Calista said firmly, and she was holding both of his hands, now; they were incredibly warm, and he wondered if his felt like ice to her; he could hardly feel his own at all. "Gerald, you _can_ do this; I promise."

"You can't promise that," he managed; it was a little easier to focus, now; he could see her eyes, those beautiful black eyes, and to his relief, they were no longer cold and blank as he'd seen them in the courtroom.

"I actually can," she said quietly; and there was something curious in her expression, something knowing and resigned; something he'd _seen_ , only a few moments ago…

 _I'm a family friend_ , he'd heard her say, inexplicably, and evenly...

"Merlin's blood — Calista, please tell me you didn't — you didn't read —"

"He wasn't going to let me stay, if I said I was your girlfriend," Calista said quietly, " _Or_ if I continued to point out what a gullible idiot he was."

She paused, and then, confirming his worst fears: "It was only once."

 _No._ "Calista, you can't — you _can't_ do that again —"

"I know."

"I really will tell them to eject you from the courtroom."

"I know. I'm not going to do it again."

He believed her, though he knew by now that she must be capable of deceiving him, if she wanted to; why, then, was her expression gradually darkening? Why was her mouth twisted into regret, and why could he see the grip of fear, in the depths of those black eyes?

"I'm — I'm going to do the very last thing I ever wanted to," Calista said, "I hope you won't hate me when it's done."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista slipped her hand into her pocket, wrapping her fingers around her wand. Usually, the feel of the smooth pine comforted her, but this time, it felt forbidding and foreign in her hand.

"You wanted me to teach you Occlumency," Calista felt herself murmur; each word landed at her feet like a heavy stone.

"Yes," Gerald said, uncertainly, "I still do; but surely there isn't time _now_? We only have a few more minutes."

There was something vaguely hopeful in his tone, as if he were waiting for her to tell him _Don't be silly, of course we have time_. But he was right; there was nowhere near enough time for her to teach him anything at all; there wouldn't have been even if she'd started right when he'd first asked, and even if neither of them had taken a moment to eat or sleep since then.

"There's no time," she confirmed, "But there's something else — I've never actually done it myself before, but… I know how it works. I think I can do it." She took a breath, and held it briefly. If only she could hold this breath forever; if only she could preserve the look on Gerald's face, hopeful and puzzled, for just as long; but she'd told him the truth. There was no time.

"My father has performed a particular kind of legilimency on me, before," she told him, quietly, "When I was — mostly when I was small; when I couldn't always block things out myself…"

She swallowed; he still looked puzzled.

"I can — at least, I _think_ I can — help you block out the fear, all of the traumatic memories that _he's_ bringing up. I can… I should also be able to make you understand me, so I can remind you of the cases from my father's list, and… and I suppose I could try to reassure you, if you wanted me to…"

Gerald gaped; his mouth opened, and she braced herself, half-expecting that he would banish her from the room now, without even waiting to ask the judge.

"You can _do_ that?" Gerald whispered; if she hadn't known better, she would have thought that his tone was edging on awe.

"I think so. I've seen how my father does it."

"That seems impossible," Gerald protested, "I've never read anything about legilimency that even approximates what you're describing."

Calista shrugged, frowning defensively. "Well, didn't you tell me yourself that no one will admit to being able to practise it anymore, because of You-Know-Who?" she asked, a bit more sharply than she intended. "I — Gerald, I need to know if you want me to do this or not; I'll need a few minutes to create an anchor point."

"I — yes, of course, if it's something you can do, I want you to do it," he said, shaking his head slightly, bewilderment still evident on his features, "But, Calista — I don't think I'll be able to maintain eye contact the entire time we're in the courtroom, no matter how hard I try."

"I know," Calista said grimly, curling her fingers even tighter around her wand; a cold bead of sweat trickled down to the small of her back; perhaps it even settled into the raised edges of her scar. "That's why I need to create an anchor point. I'll be able to stay connected to you that way, even if you look away."

Gerald blinked; something flickered across his eyes, and Calista made herself look away. If she saw fear now, she could not go through with it.

"All right," Gerald said, at last. "Do… whatever you need to do."

Calista inhaled; she could hear the murmur of voices somewhere beyond the closed door of the small side-room they were in; not close enough that she feared they would be interrupted, but close enough to remind her that they didn't have much time left. She drew her wand from her pocket, and lifted it with fingers that suddenly felt weak and cold. She wished she could have done it the other way, wandlessly, but she wasn't confident that she could stay connected long enough to place an anchor.

"Right," Calista said, "I need you to try as hard as you can to block anything you don't want me to see. If you… if you can, try to separate those thoughts towards the back of your mind, and I promise I won't go after them."

"I — I'll try."

She looked into Gerald's eyes, and for a moment, she hesitated. He looked back at her trustingly, and for some reason, that made her heart ache. What if this was the last time he could look at her like that? She had never been less certain of anything in her _life_ , and yet…

She recalled the way his shoulders had slumped, the way his hands had trembled, the way his voice had failed, in the courtroom. She knew the signs, better than anyone; how could she let his dementors catch up to him, when she knew how to cast this particular Patronus?

" _Legilimens_ ," Calista said quietly, careful to keep her movements slow, her wand far enough away not to startle him.

She encountered resistance immediately; it gave her an intense feeling of relief to realise that she would still have to _try_ to break his defenses. She let the tendrils of her mind explore the outermost wall around his mind; she didn't want to sap his strength by directly overpowering him, so she crept along the gate, searching for a weak spot.

A minute passed, and another. She considered the barrier, testing briefly against it, to determine how much resistance it would offer, if she _did_ have to use brute force.

"You're stronger than I expected," Calista mused, suddenly pleased despite herself. "I think you could layer your defenses, if you wanted to."

She saw Gerald's face flush with pride, despite his concerned frown. "I — I wouldn't even know where to begin."

"The memories I asked you to guard," she said, as she continued to send tendrils searching along the edge of his mind, "See if you can draw some of your outer barrier towards them."

Gerald frowned with concentration; gradually, she saw a shift in the wall before her, a thinning spot, and she surmised that he'd managed some success.

"You've revealed a weakness in your outer defences," Calista observed, "But for the moment, that actually serves us well."

She slipped through the opening with only a moderate effort, and even more importantly, with minimal damage to the structure of his mental defences.

Immediately, she could feel waves and threads of memory flitting and swirling around her; she could sense brightness, threads of light that represented his thoughts; not far from where her questing tendril had paused, she sensed a weaker, watery sort of barrier than the one she'd slipped through to get as far as she had. It was something like a thick smoke, or a pane of frosted glass. If she'd wanted to, she knew she could break through it; if she wanted to, she supposed she could take a closer look at any of the the images swirling around her.

 _I'm here,_ she said, and she could feel his mind bristling at the announcement, at the intrusion; how could it _not_?

"That seemed — alarmingly easy for you," Gerald muttered, uneasily, though he kept his gaze locked on hers, allowing their connection to continue; unbidden, she was flooded with the content at the forefront of his mind; it wasn't words, exactly; it was a feeling, a mingled trepidation and awe. He'd been woefully unaware of the true extent of her strength, that much was evident. And yet…

He was afraid, but not overwhelmingly so; he seemed intimidated but if he also harboured disgust or loathing, or any of the other things she'd half-expected to encounter, then it was expertly hidden.

"How much of my mind can you read? "Gerald asked, warily, "How do I know if my second barrier is even working, since I hardly felt you break through the first?"

 _I didn't break it_ , she reminded him silently, _I slipped through a gap._

"The distinction hardly seems important," he observed aloud, not quite unkindly.

"It is, though," she answered in kind, "It doesn't matter _how_ strong your barriers are, if they're inconsistent. And as for your other question…

 _I'm deliberately trying not to view any of your memories, or read any of your thoughts_ , she told him, _So as long as you don't think something_ at _me, I think it will be safe. But…_

"I can withdraw, if you want me to," she said, quietly; but Gerald shook his head, immediately and firmly.

"No," he said, "If this will work — if you can help me — then I want you to do it."

She nodded, and concentrated on calling back to herself, pulling tendril after tendril of her own consciousness towards the gap she'd uncovered in his barrier, gathering her strength; but instead of questing for information, as she'd done to his father, she tried to _build_ something instead. She recalled the shining, golden wall that her father had constructed for her, inside of her mind, on a dark night very long ago, when her memories had threatened to consume her.

Unbidden, the image of another wall rose; an impenetrable grey one, built from her own strength, but used to keep her _out_ of the sanctuary of her own core memories; for a moment, it was impossible not to think of the woman who had erected it there; the woman who had, in her way, trained Calista to do exactly what she was about to do.

"I'll need your help," Calista said, and despite the trepidation that hung around her, in his mind, he nodded readily.

"Tell me what to do."

"I need you to concentrate on a memory of us together," Calista bade Gerald softly, forcing the ghost of her mother back to the dark corner it belonged in, "It can be — erm, it can be happy or sad, but it needs to be very strong, something that makes you feel like I'm in the room with you, even when I'm not."

 _The cold glare of sharp grey eyes; an unearthly shriek followed by a soft, dark roll of laughter that sent fire and ice crawling simultaneously up her spine; the heavy, sticky patter of blood on a shiny wooden floor._ Her mother had always known how to find those memories…

Calista shivered. As if she'd willed it, the faint lines of her scar floated in front of her; for an instant, it was all she could see, and _then_ —

" _It's not all right," she could hear herself sobbing, "She…"_ _her voice faded briefly as she recoiled from the raw pain in her own voice and she wasn't certain if it was an error in his recall, or if she'd blocked it out; "the fucking Dark Mark —"_

" _Calista."_ It was a very odd feeling, seeing this memory from his side; she felt the way that his arms had shifted, drawing her close, the way that he had pressed his palm earnestly to her shoulder — _Oh, mon cœur, I'm so sorry; I wish I could take it away for you._

 _She felt herself struggling away from him — or perhaps she was wiping a tear, always so convinced that they made her weak, when he always thought of her as anything but — and he couldn't let that happen, not now. He sensed that if she did get away from him, in that moment, she might never come back._

 _He touched her chin, willing her to meet his gaze; when she closed her eyes, he shifted his thumb, brushing a tear away from them. He wished he could do the same with the shadows he'd glimpsed, in her eyes; and then, as if he'd willed it, her eyes flew open again, and he had the smallest fraction of a chance to make her see what he'd been trying to for so many months._

" _I love you," he told her, quietly and sincerely, "Te amo. I_ _s breá liom tú_. _I'm running out of languages to say it in, but I'll learn some more, if it will make you believe me."_

 _Her eyes shifted again; he couldn't quite read her, but he thought some of the shadows had retreated. She asked him to say it again, in English, and he did; he'd have said it until his mouth was dry and aching, if she asked him to._

" _I —" she'd sucked in a breath, and the look in her eyes in that moment was one that he would probably remember forever. "I love you too, Gerald._ _In toto corde meo te amo."_

 _There; there it was, the light that shown so rarely from within her, in those days; the one he had resolved to call to the surface, as often as he could; and in a moment, they were flirting, and a moment after that, he was tasting the leftover salt of tears on her neck, fingers in her soft hair, and creeping underneath her blouse…_

Calista felt the sting of salt in her eyes now, and realised she was dangerously close to tears once more, here in the dingy side-office of the Muggle courthouse… but she couldn't waste this time, or the utterly perfect memory he'd offered up, at her bidding. She twined a thread of her own mind around one from the proffered memory, and let her own recollections of that day bubble to the surface.

It was startlingly easy to bring to the surface; perhaps his memory had jogged hers, or perhaps this particular memory had been lying in wait, knowingly, since the day she'd used it to help summon the silvery thestral, that dark night.

She latched onto the tapestry of his memory, weaving her own threads in between his; she knew, from the dreams she'd had when her mother had placed anchors in _her_ mind that there was a very good chance _he_ could now read her version of the memory, now that she was weaving it so closely with his — but after all, even if he could, wasn't it only fair, at this point?

"All right," Calista made herself say, when it was done, and there was no turning back, "I'm — I think I'm anchored. Close your eyes for a second, and we'll test it."

He obliged; she could still feel his thoughts swirling around her, could still feel his memory, connected with hers, as if they were somehow holding hands inside his mind.

She registered his disbelief; _This is incredible; this is hopelessly advanced. I can't believe Professor Snape taught you_ this _._

Calista frowned, and drew a bit more of herself into his mind; it was easier, now that she had a foothold. She bolstered the wall she'd built, creating a shelter they could bury his trauma and his fear behind, at least for a short while.

"He didn't," Calista said grimly, just as they both registered the sound of approaching footsteps beyond the door. Perhaps she'd accidentally revealed the truth to him, in their connected state, or perhaps he simply used the logic that Ravenclaws were so well known for, but she could _feel_ the moment that her words registered with him; she could feel the moment that he realised that _this_ , what she was doing now, was precisely the way that her mother had victimised her, from so very far away.

" _Mon colibri_ ," he began, "I —"

"The hearing's starting again," she said, cutting him off, "I'll help you through it, but — you need to understand… afterwards, it's going to be difficult…"

"I remember," Gerald said softly, "You told me before — you need to withdraw properly, or you'll get hurt."

She nodded; and then she shifted her eyes towards the door, just as the knob turned.

"I'm just afraid," Calista said quietly, as the door opened inward, "That we're both going to be hurt anyway, when this is done."

"Gerald?" Tina poked her head through the door, "Sweetheart, they're ready for us to come back — oh, you look better already; thank you for talking to him, Calista."

Calista made herself smile blandly, squaring her shoulders. "Of course," she said, "It was no trouble at all."

She could feel Gerald's unease plainly, and though it would have been utterly mad if she _hadn't_ registered his apprehension after the way that she'd entered his mind, connected it with her own — it still stung, in the same dark, infrequently visited corner of her mind where she'd stored their argument, earlier that day.

And then, Gerald reached for her hand, twining his fingers around hers like the threads of a memory; on his other side, his mother touched his shoulder, gently, and ahead of them, Terry made a rude gesture at the figure of their father's back, at the end of the hall, and then the four of them entered the courtroom together.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

The hearing went on for an hour and a half after the break. At first, Calista tried to follow the conversation in its entirety; when she felt Gerald hesitate, or reach for the recall of one of the cases he'd studied, she reassured him or reminded him of the case, sometimes checking the list in her pocket surreptitiously; and though she tried to keep her own feelings separate from his, she couldn't help but reveal her own reactions to his father's words, a few times.

"Gerry, my boy," Brandon said, leaning slightly forward, so his grey hair drifted in front of his eyes, and his son could not avoid his watery brown gaze, "I would take it all back if I could — I'd have us start over, the way it should have been."

She could feel the pulling sadness in the back of Gerald's mind; it wasn't fear precisely… but it tugged at her own memory at something she'd heard once, in a dream.

 _She said that, too,_ Calista told Gerald silently, _I wanted to believe it so badly I almost did; but it was another one of her lies._

She saw Gerald blink, and look past his father in her direction; there was no doubt that he had heard her, but his expression wavered; and then:

"Take it _all_ back?" Gerald asked, just loudly enough for the words to carry to her, in the second row of the galley, and surely to the judge beside them, "The — the insults, the violence, the yelling and screaming? All of it?"

"All of it," Brandon said, emphatically; he reached for Gerald's hand, then, in an exaggerated gesture that was surely for the audience, more than it was for his son.

A flash of fear flooded Gerald's mind briefly, and she realised all at once that she was wrong; the display _had_ been for Gerald; and then, before she could even wrangle the fear behind the wall she had built, Gerald pushed through it himself.

"I wish you could," Gerald said solidly; a terrible ache was spreading in his mind, and she could feel it as keenly as if it were in her own self; it gripped her stomach and her throat, and ran coldly in her blood. "If there were some sort of — of _magic_ —" he twisted the word out viciously, almost triumphantly, and Calista recalled the way that his father had used the word earlier, to describe the family's disappearance, "— that could take back every nightmare, every scar, every horrible secret I tried to keep from Terry, to stop him from going through the same horror I went through — then perhaps there would be a point to this conversation; but there _isn't_ , and I'm not interested in your apology, now."

Calista felt a surge of pride; and then, his father leaned closer again, and she felt the fear, the darkest of his memories, surging forward against the barrier she'd created; she let a little more of herself slip into his mind, strengthening the wall. At some point, she realised that she was draining her own reserves.

A decade of habit made her preserve her own barriers in triplicate; but nearly every other thread of potential she had was in Gerald's mind now, holding _his_ nightmares at bay, so he could finally confront the man who'd given them to him in the first place.

The judge had shifted away from the mediation; at some point, he'd asked Brandon to step away from the witness stand, had ceased insisting that Gerald and his father converse directly, instead analysing the complaints of each party's initial filings against legal precedent.

Calista could not enjoy the shift towards a potential victory, after the first hour had passed. She could only concentrate on two things: keeping the barrier in place, and _not_ interpreting the memories that swirled around her, in Gerald's mind.

It had grown more difficult for her to block them out; she suspected that his own defenses, those she'd asked him to use to guard his secrets, were strained from her continued presence in his mind.

 _Calista?_

Merlin, she was tired; she made herself send the pulse of a response to his call.

 _What's the case?_ He asked her, urgently, _The one your father said would be important…_

 _Fuck;_ she had looked at it a hundred times this morning alone, and yet, her increasingly bleary brain would not let her recall it; she reached into her pocket, withdrawing the parchment.

 _Goldstein v Glasgow_ , she telegraphed to him, _Nineteen fifty-one. Something about… about the succession of real estate… but no, how could that be relevant? I must be remembering it wrong._

A spark lit somewhere in Gerald's mind; she found herself drawn towards it.

 _I remember now,_ he said, utterly confident, _It's — Goldstein v Glasgow — that's a Wizengamot case. It_ was _regarding property, but since the deed was registered as a Muggle home, they had to disguise the ruling as a Muggle case to make the outcome valid._

It sounded vaguely familiar; it was a very dry case — something about a terminally ill wizard, and whether his property went to his Muggle wife, or their adult half-blood daughter upon his conference to a care facility; but...

 _How in Merlin's name is that relevant?_ She asked Gerald, _And how does my_ father _, of all people, know about it?_

An eddy of emotion rose up, suddenly, in Gerald's mind; she could feel it swarm around her; the blurry shadow-wall he'd created, over an hour ago at her bidding to keep his secrets safe wavered; it shifted, allowing her a glimpse beyond the flimsy barrier —

For an instant, Calista saw the unmistakable figure of her father, and beside him, Gerald; she saw her father extend his hand, a sheaf of parchment clutched between the narrow fingers.

She could see her father's lips forming words; she couldn't help but decipher the utterly familiar form of her name, and then...

'… _she doesn't know.'_

It struck Calista fiercely and immediately that this was something she was not meant to see; and yet, how could she look away, from the two people she trusted most in the world discussing some secret they were harbouring from her _together_?

She felt herself creeping towards the vision; it was always easier, of course, to read thoughts that related to yourself, and _both_ she and Gerald were in a heightened emotional state — she thought she would be able to explain, if she had to, how she'd come to see this particular memory — she could hardly _avoid_ it, after all…

 _No_ , she told herself, firmly; and without thinking, she tugged fiercely from within herself, drawing the first sizeable scrap of strength she could, and cocooned it around the offending memory, dulling the vision in an instant. _I'm not going to do that._

 _And then —_

It was as if she'd loosed a storm; as if a dam had burst, and every seething, frothing drop of fear, of anger, of darkness and rage that she'd locked so carefully and so firmly away earlier in the day was suddenly flooding her.

 _Calista?_

She could feel Gerald's emotions sharply, all of a sudden, as they rushed at her from the other side. A maelstrom of relief, disbelief, and a hundred other things swept her along, and for a moment, she could make sense of nothing; it was like a massive rushing around her ears, like a raging ocean had suddenly swallowed her whole.

From one direction, snippets of the trial flashed at her: _The story your boys tell, Mr. Boot, doesn't match these letters. I don't know which is closer to the truth —_

 _Calista,_ Gerald said again, fiercely, and somehow reverently, the words echoing through all the other flashes and ribbons of words that swirled around her: _We won._

But Gerald's mind was only half of the picture; it was only half of the chaos. The darkness that had erupted, suddenly, in her own mind was rolling forward, a sudden, ferocious storm.

 _I'm inclined to leave my judgment at this,_ the judge said, or perhaps it was only Calista's interpretation of Gerald's memory of what the judge had said; she could no longer quite tell: _Your sons are old enough to make up their own minds. You're free to write them, at whatever address you have; and if Gerald or Terence choose to write back, or provide you with another address for correspondence, then that's entirely up to them._

The bridge between them, the anchor Calista had placed, lit up in the forefront of her mind like a network of stars; the storm she'd unwittingly released inside herself was reaching her _own_ outer barrier, and she felt an awful, agonising _pull_ , as her panicked mind tried desperately to pull itself back together, to pull every fibre of itself back into reinforcing her own internal protections. It was habit, after all; it was what she'd been trained to do her entire life.

"Calista," Gerald was beside her now, in addition to being all around her; while the buzz of his thoughts continued to press at her, his arms came around her, but the rest of whatever he said was lost to the rushing in her ears, in her mind; the pull intensified, and now she could feel the weight of _his_ fears, too, his own shadows, straining and pushing back against the wall she'd created to rein them in.

"I — I can't," Calista managed, "I have to — there's no time to do things the right way."

 _Calista!_ Gerald said, or he thought; she couldn't tell, she could only feel the sudden bewildered anguish behind the word, and _then_ , two waves of darkness crested simultaneously; she could feel Gerald's memories break free, just as her own pulled her viciously and completely back into her own mind.

Searing pain filled her head, a hundred thousand knives driving themselves into her skull from the inside; vaguely she felt a brief moment of warmth on the skin of her forearms, registered daylight somewhere above her, and then the pain and the pressure overtook her, though neither faded.

A thousand memories swarmed her; one came to the forefront, suddenly. Her father, and a warning he'd given her once, impossibly long ago:

 _The mind cannot be stretched too thin, for too long; to attempt to force it can be agonising at best, and disastrous at worst._

 _Well,_ she remembered thinking, just before she stopped remembering anything, _It's a little fucking late for that, now, isn't it?_


	12. Consequences

**12\. Consequences**

The first thing Calista became aware of was the ache, like rolling thunder, in her head. It seemed to come in waves, and although it was undoubtedly one of the worst headaches she'd ever experienced in her life, at least it no longer approached the searing agony that had sent her into this unnatural darkness to begin with.

Speaking of darkness — she attempted to open her eyes, to see if it would lift, but it was a lot like trying to wake up from a dream; no matter what she willed her eyelids to do, they remained stubbornly shut.

 _Unless they're not closed_ , she managed to think, through the storm of pain in her head, _What if I've gone blind?_

With a massive effort, she attempted to wrench her lids open again, and _this time —_

"Aaaarrgh!"

 _Someone_ had been leaning over her, until her shriek of panic startled them; whoever-it-was shrank back slightly, and she could just make out an odd, hunched-over shape, a grizzled mane of hair, a whizzing, startlingly blue eye…

The figure was chuckling now, and drawing closer again. Through her haze of mingled pain and panic, she had one clear instinct, and that was tor reach down for her wand. Mercifully, wherever she was, however she had gotten here, her wand was still in her pocket, and a second later she had scrabbled weak, curling fingers around it.

" _Afflig — Affligus!"_ she managed to croak weakly, but the figure merely flicked its hand, and somehow deflected her spell.

"Sorry about that, lassie," the figure growled, "Didn't mean to startle you."

Now that he was properly within her sight, what stood before her was a hundred times worse than even her panicked mind had been able to imagine. The oddest gaze she could imagine — one eye brown, one luridly blue — peered at her from a face that was like scarred granite, and that sent dread hurtling into her stomach the instant that recognition dawned.

 _Mad-Eye Moody_. Panic rose like bile in her throat, and she had an unwelcome flash of memory, Gerald's voice cracking with emotion:

 _How about the fact that you could end up in bloody Azkaban if you were caught?_

Her head whipped around, taking in her surroundings. White walls, rows of beds — _wasn't this familiar, actually?_ — and with the motion, the thunder in her head rolled threateningly; but she had to think through it, because wherever she was, she wasn't in Azkaban _yet_ , and the only thing she knew with certainty in that moment was that she _had to get away from Mad-Eye Moody_.

She struggled to rise, gripping her wand desperately, as visions of her fate pressed wildly against her eyes; she had been captured, she would be tortured by Aurors, she would be tossed to the ministrations of the dementors and of her _mother_ —

"Alastor! How many times do I need to tell you to stop harassing my patients?" There was something familiar about the new voice in the room, but she didn't have time to place it; she had to _run_ , she had to find her father, she had to —

"Not what it looks like, Poppy," she heard Moody grunt, just as her legs dropped over the side of whatever she'd been lying on, and her vision began to blur and swim threateningly; all at once, her attempt to flee was utterly thwarted by a pair of firm hands on her shoulders, pushing her back down into a sea of pillows.

" _Lie down_ , Calista, dear," the familiar voice came again, and then its owner came briefly into view, tucking a soft blanket efficiently around her.

 _Madam Pomfrey?_ And the room she was in — Merlin, how had she ended up in the hospital wing at _Hogwarts_ , of all places?

"I came to ask if you had any extra leeches," Moody's gravelly voice came again, and dimly Calista remembered that he was teaching here this year, that she'd been worried for her father and her cousin. "Then I saw Miss Snape here stirring, and I thought I'd check her over for any signs of what might have hurt her."

He took a step closer, and Calista immediately renewed her panicked struggle against Madam Pomfrey's taut blanketing, to no avail.

"Shh, Calista, please calm down or you'll only make yourself feel worse," Madam Pomfrey said, and then, over her shoulder: "Severus said it was some sort of accident. Our best guess is a Memory Charm gone wrong, but —"

"Been here since Friday, hasn't she?" Moody cut in to observe, "And just coming to now? One hell of a Memory Charm, eh?"

 _Severus_ , Calista's pain-fogged brain managed to pick up, and…

"Since Friday?" she heard herself croak desperately to Madam Pomfrey's profile, "What day is it? Where is my father?"

"See here, Alastor, you're distressing her," Madam Pomfrey said sternly, "Visiting hours are over, I'm afraid."

"Not visiting," Moody reminded her, "Leeches. I have a mind to use a few in a demonstration this week. You don't have any to spare, do you?"

Madam Pomfrey shook her head, now stepping briefly away from Calista's bedside to usher Mad-Eye out. "I'm afraid not," she said, "My stock's been mysteriously disappearing since September."

Moody grunted again. "Guess I can use spiders again," he said, and then:

"I'll go tell Snape she's awake, now. Been meaning to have another little chat with him, anyway." He shifted then, and suddenly his blue eye was locked on Calista, over Madam Pomfrey's shoulder.

"Come to think of it, once she's up to it, I'd like a little chat with Calista, here, too."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Gerald sighed heavily, feeling a mantle of despair settling over his shoulders as the fireplace before him went unanswered for the fourth time that hour. He glanced down at his watch, and slipped his other hand into his pocket. Five minutes before he was expected back at his desk, and only one Sickle left, hardly enough to dispense one more pinch of Floo powder from the coin-activated slot on the wall; the odds were not in his favour.

He let his shoulders slump under the weight of the last several days, and turned away from the neat row of small grates, hardly even hearing any of the conversations that thundered and rattled down the row, where everyone else had been able to make their connection.

He supposed he could go to Chadwick and Mira's in the evening and try again, although he had already spent the majority of his weekend there, sitting at their hearth, peering fruitlessly into the fireplace, and he suspected that the both of them were exasperated with his efforts, though they had thus far been kind enough.

"I'm certain she's fine, mate," Chadwick had said, at one point, "They never would have let her out of St. Mungo's if she wasn't going to be, right?"

Gerald knew it was well-meaning, but Chadwick hadn't been there; he didn't know how terrifying it had been, to hear Calista cry out in obvious agony at precisely the moment that all of his nightmares flooded his mind simultaneously; couldn't understand the fierce flash of horror when, an instant later, she had gone suddenly limp in his arms, and nearly fallen into a busy street during the Muggle rush hour.

Chadwick hadn't been there, either, to see his mother's fretting and Terry's alarmed questioning while they waited for the mediwizard to answer his summons; he hadn't seen the mediwizard's disheartening frown when they'd been unable to revive her on the spot with a potion, and insisted she be transported to the hospital and admitted immediately.

Chadwick didn't know that, by the time Gerald had gotten hold of Severus Snape from a grate in the waiting room of St. Mungo's and the man had stormed into the room himself scarce _seconds_ later, it wasn't so much that the hospital medical staff had 'let her out' than that Severus Snape had utterly refused to let her _stay_.

Gerald was powerless to stop himself from reliving that last moment in the hospital again, during the long walk from the Ministry's pay grate hall back to his desk; he could still see Calista, looking still and small and pale, refusing to wake; he could hear the doctors arguing with Severus, even as he hastily signed the discharge papers, fierce snarl creasing his face.

" _Sir,"_ he could still hear the mediwizard saying, the very same one that had responded in the street, " _We really don't recommend that she be moved, until we've figured out precisely what's wrong with her. She's not responding to the Reinvigoration Infusion, and this young man here who was with her says she may have been injured attempting to perform some sort of legilimency —"_

" _This young man here_ ," Severus had snarled acidly, sparing hardly a look at Gerald, " _Is an idiot; he has no idea what he's talking about."_

It was the last thing that Gerald had heard, from either Calista or her father; since then, dozens of his calls had gone unanswered, to her home and to her father's office at Hogwarts. He'd even Apparated to her house yesterday, only to have his knocks at the door go unanswered as well.

 _One more day_ , Gerald told himself, as he guided himself mechanically into his office, taking down the same roll of parchment he'd been numbly staring at all morning, _If I don't hear anything by tomorrow, I'm going to have to… to…_

He never had the chance to finish his thought; a sudden panicked shriek startled him, sending him rocketing to his feet, wand drawn.

"What was that?!"

"Huh? Whoa — Ger, everything all right?"

Mira had half-risen from her desk, and was eyeing him quizzically.

"That — that sound, that scream — didn't you hear it?"

Mira furrowed her brow, frowning with concern.

"Gerry, no one screamed," she said, but he could still hear it, echoing on — it was like a thready pulse of panic, reverberating in his head and — oh, gods, it sounded like —

"Calista," he said urgently, already halfway to the office door, "It's Calista, I know it is, she just cried out — help me find her!"

He tore down the corridor, or at least he intended to; he yelped, as a hand at his shoulder stopped him short.

"Gerald," Mira came around, still gripping his shoulder, to face him. "There wasn't any sound; I would have heard it."

"There was," he insisted, but Mira was shaking her head, quite pityingly.

"No, there wasn't," Mira said, frown deepening; briefly, her grip on his shoulder tightened, and then, her expression shifted, into one of soft determination.

"I think you should go home and get some rest," the older woman said, gently, "I'll tell everyone you weren't feeling well."

"I — I —" Gerald frowned; the ringing, the echo, whatever it was in his head, had begun to recede, but he had been so _certain_ he'd heard her…

"Go on," Mira said, "Pack it up for today; I'll cover for you."

Gerald's first instinct was to refuse the offer — after all, it was difficult enough to crawl through hour after without news when he had something to distract him — but then it occurred to him that he didn't really have to go _home_.

"All right," he finally said, already envisioning himself stopping by Wiseacre's Wizarding Equipment on his way home, to pick up a fresh pouch of Floo Powder, and then asking Chadwick to let him into their flat to continue his calls, "I suppose I could — I do need to rest."

Mira nodded, and released his shoulder; Gerald turned quickly, before she could change her mind, and _then_ —

"Oh," Mira called, behind him, "And make sure you actually go home and rest, and don't just sit in front of the fire all afternoon. I'll tell Chad not to let you in, if I have to."

 _Damn_. Gerald felt his heart sinking, as his feet carried him woodenly away from his office. For a moment, he did consider actually going home, since it seemed as if he had little other choice, outside of raiding his Gringotts' account for more Sickles to use at the pay grates, which would almost certainly get Mira in trouble if she was covering for him.

And then, he heard it again, or rather, he _felt_ it; a brief, sharp flicker of panic; and he knew that no matter what Mira had said, it was _real_ , and it was undoubtedly Calista.

 _One more day_ , he had started to think, only moments ago, and at the time, he hadn't quite known what his next move would be. Now, however…

He recalled the day that Calista had shown him the Charms that would unlock the front door of the house on Spinner's End, and briefly, he tried to convince himself that he wasn't _really_ going to let himself in, uninvited…

Moments later, he emerged from the Apparition point closest to her house, with the echo of her panic still ringing in his head. With any luck, she and her father would be home, and he could deal with whatever ire Severus would undoubtedly aim at him as soon as he had ascertained that Calista was all right; and if that failed, if they weren't at home…

 _Then I'll call his office from their house,_ he resolved grimly and with finality. _I doubt he'll ignore a call from_ there _._

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Severus paced the length of his study, seething with a fury that seemed only to intensify with every step, since he had no appropriate outlet for it.

He was furious with Mad-Eye, for the thinly veiled threats, when he had come to inform him that Calista was awake, and yet, he could not reveal the true depths of his rage to the Auror without risking that doing so would somehow fuel the old man's interest in Calista herself. He had only to remember their irksome conversation at the start of term regarding her article to realise it was a possibility he would rather avoid.

He was furious with Poppy for letting Moody into the hospital wing in the first place, when he'd specifically requested that Calista be allowed no visitors but himself, but he could hardly berate her when he still needed her help, during the hours that he could not be with Calista himself.

More than anything, he was furious with _himself_. It made his skin crawl to think that he had practically baited her, that morning over breakfast, to do exactly what she'd done; he'd accused her of being selfish and self-destructive, as if he had already forgotten what she'd shown him from that horrifying night on the Hogwarts grounds; as if he didn't know any better, didn't see that the other side of the coin for his daughter was to be self _less_ and no less self-destructive.

Suddenly, Severus' musings were interrupted by a crackling sound from his fireplace; he whirled, and saw the tell-tale smoke of an incoming call. He narrowed his eyes, waiting for the tendrils of smoke to spell out the origin of the call, prepared to snarl at the now-familiar address of Boot's cousin's fireplace; he readied his boot to smother the flame before the call could connect, and _then_ he growled, deep in his throat, as he saw the call's origin as _his_ _own home_.

He drew his wand, and used the fingers of his other hand to throw a handful of his own Floo powder down into the grate; but he didn't take from the larger pot for calls, instead he took from the smaller, copper pot that he used to travel back and forth between here and his home, and he reached his hand directly into the fire, yanking at whomever was at the other end, who had _dared_ to enter his home, and pulling them through, wand held at the ready position.

And then, suddenly, as if his wish had been granted — there, at his feet, was the _perfect_ outlet for the storm of rage that had been roaring inside of him, these last few days; here, at last, was the one person he could rightfully blame for Calista's condition above any others, including himself.

" _You_ ," he snarled softly, pointing his wand steadily between Gerald Boot's eyes, "Have a lot to answer for; let's start with your reasons for breaking into my house, and see if you'll live long enough to answer for anything else."

"I — how —" the boy was clearly dumbfounded, and obviously shaken at having been suddenly and unceremoniously yanked through the Floo system; nonetheless, Severus spared him no explanation, nor any mercy. He simply glared at the teen, wordlessly daring him simultaneously to answer and _not_ to answer.

Boot swallowed, gaze locked on the tip of Severus' wand.

"I — please tell me Calista is okay," the boy said, voice cracking. Severus snarled, and flicked his wand slightly; Boot flinched, but kept his gaze steady.

"I will tell you nothing," Severus said silkily, "Until you tell me how and why you came to be calling me from my house."

"I didn't break in," Boot said warily, at last, eyes still unwavering from the wand pointed at this face, "Calista showed me the charms ages ago, and I — I was just trying to find her, to find out if she's — _please_ , just tell me whether she's all right."

Severus flicked his wand again; this time, the boy did not flinch, but merely set his jaw, evidently determined to get his answer.

" _Legilimens_ ," Severus hissed, before he'd quite made up his mind to do so; for an instant, he battered relentlessly against the younger man's mental wall, intent on breaking through it, as much to punish the boy as to see whether he was telling the truth; and then, there was a brief, small flash of motion and —

" _Expelliarmus!_ "

His wand flew from his hand, rolling across the floor; Boot plucked it from the floor, as he rose quickly to his feet, and suddenly it was Severus who was staring at the tip of a wand, raised to his face.

Boot's expression was grim, and not without fear, but he held his own wand steady, and kept Severus' wand firmly gripped in his left hand, quite well out of reach of the older man's grasp.

"Tell me where she is," Boot's voice cracked again, "Tell me she's all right."

Severus snarled; unlike he had done, Boot didn't flick his wand threateningly, didn't fire off a spell; he merely stood there, wary but firm, and waited for the question he'd been trying in vain to ask for days.

"Calista is here, at Hogwarts," Severus finally said, "And though it's no thanks to you, I expect she'll make a full recovery in a few more days."

Boot's relief was palpable; he lowered his wand, and some of the grimness in his expression receded, though the wariness remained. Severus made a snatch for his wand; Boot's eyes flickered and he took a half-step back, but managed not to flinch, this time.

"Here," Boot said, holding Severus' wand out carefully, "Take it; but don't try to attack my mind again."

Severus snatched the wand back, and smirked coldly. "And if I do?"

"Can't you guess?" Boot said, a lot more steadily than Severus expected, "After all, you're the one that told me it would be effective, in a situation like this."

"You place a lot of confidence in your ability to fire a Shield Charm off _before_ I manage to pick your mind bare," Severus said softly, but even then, Boot did not retreat.

"I already Disarmed you quickly enough. I don't want to use a Shield Charm, since I have no interest in trying to read _your_ thoughts, but since it _is_ my best spell, I will if I have to."

Severus' lip curled, but his anger had cooled sufficiently —

 _Or_ , an unpleasant voice in the back of his mind countered, _You're actually afraid he could cast quickly enough to deflect you._

"Sit," he growled, gesturing with his chin towards the armchair behind Boot, "Since you're here, I do intend to make you answer for a great deal, as I said when you arrived."

"May I see Calista first?"

"You'll be lucky if I let you see her again," Severus snapped irritably, "Now _sit_ , Boot; my patience is growing thin."

Boot frowned, and he seemed to consider something for a moment; and then, just before Severus reconsidered his decision not to hex the boy, he sat.

"I know what you want to ask me," Boot said, quietly, meeting his gaze directly, "You want to know why I told the mediwizard that what happened to Calista had something to do with legilimency —"

"Oh, yes," Severus snarled, mood quickly darkening again, "That's an _excellent_ place to start."

"I had to," Boot said, "The Reinvigoration Infusion wasn't working —"

"Obviously," Severus snapped, "As it isn't designed to treat damage caused by the mental arts."

"That's exactly it," Boot said, "I had to tell them, so they could treat her properly, with the correct potions —"

"There _is_ no potion that can heal mental damage," Severus snapped, "You should have told them it was a backfired Memory Charm, and let them treat for that until I arrived."

"But it _wasn't_ a Memory Charm," the younger man said, shaking his head, "What if the treatment for that would have done more damage?"

"It wouldn't have mattered," Severus said grimly, "As the treatment can't be administered to an unconscious victim; I would have arrived before any harm could have been —"

Boot startled him, then, leaping to his feet; his expression twisted into one of anguish.

" _How was I supposed to know that_?" he practically exploded, "I didn't even know she would — that she could — I thought the worst that could happen to her, from what she was doing, was a headache, and then she was — she wouldn't wake up! _Merlin's blood,_ I was afraid she might be dying!"

Severus was on his feet too, in an instant. " _Then why did you let her do it?_ " he roared, "If you were too ignorant to understand what could happen!"

"I didn't know," Boot repeated, a bit desperately, "I didn't even know what she suggested was _possible_ ; I certainly didn't realise… didn't understand it was so dangerous."

"Legilimency is _always_ dangerous," Severus snapped, "Your ignorance of more advanced techniques is no excuse to disregard such a simple fact."

"I might be ignorant of 'advanced techniques'," Boot acknowledged, grimly standing his ground, "But Calista isn't; and yet, unless she completely misled me, _she_ didn't even realise what might happen. Did you ever warn her?"

"I have _always_ taught her to be careful," Severus snarled, grip tightening on his wand; how _dare_ he…?

But the sinister voice in his head was already agreeing with the blasted boy. _Why didn't you warn her more clearly?_ It asked, insidiously, _why didn't you teach her better to sense her own limits?_

"She didn't know this could happen," Boot insisted again, back still straight, though he'd gone rather pale, "I'm nearly certain of it; the _only_ thing she ever said was that she could get a headache, if we severed the connection too quickly —"

"So that's what happened then, is it?" Severus snapped, pouncing on the opportunity to return the blame to Boot, "As soon as she did what you needed her to, you pushed her out? Since it was only going to be 'a headache'?"

Several expressions crossed Boot's face in rapid succession; he saw bewilderment, shock, and finally, plain offence.

"Do you really think I would do that to her?"

"Well, the evidence does seem to suggest you would, now doesn't it?" Severus asked sourly; but damn it, he didn't need to use legilimency to see that the boy was sincere, and for some reason, knowing that only irked him further.

"She —" Boot frowned, expression suddenly softening somewhat, "She doesn't think that's what happened, does she?"

"As Calista has hardly been coherent for more than five minutes at a time and is still in a great deal of pain, I don't suppose we can know precisely what she thinks just yet," Severus snarled softly, and before the words had even completely left his mouth, Boot's features were pressed with concern, and he'd stepped closer.

"Hardly — what? I thought you said she was recovering."

"Perhaps you were too ignorant to understand the first time I explained it," Severus said testily, "But damage sustained from a malpractice of the mental arts — it is not some simple Quidditch injury —"

"I _know_ that," Boot pressed, "But surely, she hasn't been unconscious for three days…?"

Severus felt his mouth pull into a thin, bitter line. He considered simply dismissing the boy; after all, he certainly didn't owe him any answers.

"I've been keeping her dosed with a strong sleeping potion," he admitted, rather against his will, "Until the pain seems to level out to a bearable threshold, where I can treat it with other potions. I had hoped to make progress today, but that blasted Auror…"

Boot blinked. "Huh? _Auror_? She's not — she's not in trouble then, is she? I'll speak with them —"

"Save your undoubtedly noble offer; she's not. Alastor Moody is 'teaching' —" he strained the word slightly, making his disdain for the prospect evident, "at Hogwarts this year, and evidently he saw fit to let himself into the hospital wing earlier this afternoon and gave her a fright. Poppy — er, Madam Pomfrey — said she worked herself up so much that she had to dose her again before I got there."

Boot frowned, softly. "Oh, gods, I hope that wasn't my fault — I said something earlier that day…"

 _Didn't we all?_ Severus thought grimly, but he stayed silent, letting the young man continue.

"I didn't want her to try and read the judge or my father," he went on, "In case — in case Magical Law Enforcement were to find out, and… the harshest possible sentence, you know, for impeding a Muggle legal proceeding is —"

"Of course I know what it is," Severus snapped, and suddenly he was gripped by the most wildly inappropriate wash of _relief_ ; here it was, proof that what Calista had done _was_ Boot's fault after all, and not his own…

"I, however, was not fool enough to remind Calista," he finished, twisting the accusation out of his mouth with a grim sort of satisfaction. "Lest she abandon that plan for a _more reckless_ one."

"I…" the boy looked suddenly bewildered, again. "I couldn't let her — are you _honestly_ saying you would have allowed her to take that risk, and that you think _I_ should have, too?"

Severus smirked coldly. "It appears you are ignorant in a great many matters," he could not resist goading, "If you suppose that I would ever allow Calista to enter a situation where _she_ was at such a risk."

"But — you just _said_ —"

"I warned Calista not to be suspected of interfering," Severus said acidly, very much as though he were explaining the purpose of a bezoar to a particularly slow first-year, "To avoid her uncle needlessly calling in a favour; but he and I already discussed it. Bartemius Crouch's department is in charge of security for the Triwizard Tournament, and they're offloading minor cases — like, oh, say, interfering in a Muggle family court case — onto other departments, where Lucius assures me has influence. If anyone _had_ found cause to write up a charge against her, Lucius would have had it filed in the rubbish bin before the ink even dried."

Boot gaped, then, and for a moment, he looked positively outraged.

"You might have clued Calista or I in on that!"

Severus felt another flash of rage, not at all lessened by the fact that part of him had to admit the boy was probably right.

"Well," he said hastily, before he could dwell on that last thought, "It hardly seemed to matter, as that plan was merely a last-ditch precaution. I, for one, was utterly confident in her ability not to be caught… of course I did not count on your convincing her to change plans and _announcing it_ to the whole of St. Mungo's."

"I've already explained why I did that —" Boot began, to which Severus hissed, viciously:

" _Yes_ ; because you're an idiot."

A wounded look crossed Boot's face, and suddenly, Severus's anger dissolved into something else; something hard and sour, and utterly similar to how he'd felt, seeing the pain clouding Calista's eyes each time she'd woken, these past few days.

"I — " he began, uncertain what he would say, but Boot cut him off.

"Right," the young man said, unexpectedly steady, "This obviously isn't going anywhere good, and it's certainly not helping Calista. If you really won't let me see her, then I suppose I'll take my leave, now; I doubt you'll oblige me, but I hope you'll tell Calista that I asked after her — oh, and tell her I fed her cat, too, while I was at your house, since it seemed no one else had bothered to."

Severus' eyes narrowed. He'd been about to relent, to let the boy see her, briefly, where she lay in the hospital wing. But now…

" _Get out of my sight!_ Ah, and Boot — I suggest you _don't_ attempt to enter my house again; I have some new charms in mind that will ensure you regret it very much if you do."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

There were several days that blurred together for Calista; she remembered sleeping a great deal, and she remembered her father and Madame Pomfrey, at various intervals, offering her doses of a familiar potion, one her father had given her for headaches before.

Gradually, the pain when she woke was lessened each time, and she found herself able to make better sense of the things around her. As she grew more coherent, and stayed awake for longer periods of time, her father would chat with her quietly, mostly to ask her how she was feeling, and precisely what had happened, but a few times she had asked him questions.

She recalled asking where Gerald was, and whether he was all right; she also remembered asking, rather frantically, if anyone had thought to feed Yellow, though she _couldn't_ make sense of his reaction, tight-lipped and grim, to both questions. He did finally tell her that both Gerald and her cat were all right, at least, though she felt a bit wounded that Gerald had apparently not been by to see her.

Finally, on Friday, Calista woke without any pain at all. Severus insisted that she stay in the Hogwarts hospital wing until they could speak, but he didn't have any time to do so during the day; and _then_ , when she thought she'd at least have a chance during dinner, he informed her she had to wait even longer.

"The delegations from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons arrive this evening for the Triwizard Tournament," he told her, "And Dumbledore insists on all of the Hogwarts staff being present to welcome them; besides, there is an… old friend coming that I suspect will want to, ah, catch up."

"Who?" Calista asked, but Severus ignored her question so efficiently that she wondered whether he had even heard it.

"Stay here," he told her, and she groaned. She'd been within these same four bloody walls for what was beginning to feel like a _lifetime_. "It would be prudent for you to examine your barriers, and ensure that your mind has fully repaired itself without compromising their integrity —"

"What the hell do you think I've been _doing_ all day, sitting in this blasted bed?" she huffed, "Counting the threads in my pillowcase? I've already _done_ all that, three times. Everything's fine. _I'm_ fine. And I'm going spare in here; can't I come to the feast?"

"Absolutely _not_. I want you to stay, and to speak with no one but myself until I've had a chance to test your barriers myself. I should be back later this evening, no later than ten —"

"Merlin's blood, _ten_? At _least_ let me stay in your quarters, then — it smells like old bed pans in here —"

" _Fine_ ," Severus snapped, "Go to my quarters, then; _and stay there_ , until I return. Don't stop to speak with anyone."

Calista rolled her eyes, but obeyed; tracing the familiar route along the dungeon corridors to her, especially when they seemed so deserted, brought on an unexpected and powerful sense of nostalgia. She supposed the corridors were so empty because everyone was already at the feast, eager to see the arrival of the Triwizard schools, but it put her in mind of many such late-night treks here, driven from her own common room by nightmares, taunting classmates, or even — perhaps worst of all — _poems_.

She pushed open the door that led to the vestibule between her father's office and his potions stores, already envisioning the familiar comfort of her father's study, the armchair that had practically become her own for how often she used it, and —

Calista let out a startled gasp as she _collided_ with someone in the pitch-dark space; _why was it so dark, anyway?_ And then, after she'd lit her wand, she had to bite her tongue to stop herself from screaming aloud.

 _Moody_ ; her heart began pounding so intensely that there was no doubt he would hear it, and it was as if her brain had sped up, too; in the fraction of a second that she stood there, wand tip lit, she took in his grizzled features, the creepy, whizzing magical eye, the gap of the storeroom door, ajar behind him, the unbelievably agile movement he used to draw his wand —

" _Immobulus!_ " she cried, sending the room pitching back into darkness as her wand changed spells, at precisely the same moment he yelled, " _Expelliarmus!"_

She felt her wand fly out of her hand, and heard it clatter to the stone floor; she dove in the direction of the sound, fingers splaying hastily over the stone — ah, _there_ ; she snatched it up, and backed herself against the door that led to her father's office, and only when her wand was gripped confidently in her hand again did she realise that she hadn't heard or sensed Moody moving at all. She held her breath, listening to the silence, and again, her mind raced through her options at what felt like lightning speed.

She could hit him with another spell, _if_ she could figure out where in the pitch-dark space to aim, now that she'd moved away from where she knew him to have been a moment ago, and _if_ she wanted to end up facing the possibility of being accused of assaulting an ex-Auror; she could make a run for it, but turning to open either door — the one behind her, or the one she'd come through — would expose her back to him, however briefly; and what if he was only pretending to have been hit by her Freezing Charm, expecting her to do precisely that?

She made up her mind, and flicked her wand — not in Moody's direction, but in the direction of the torch that she knew was on the wall, lighting it.

Immediately, she rather wished she hadn't; the sight of Mad-Eye Moody, utterly frozen in place except for that horrid blue eye, jerking and whizzing madly, was simultaneously terrifying and grotesque, even if it confirmed that her spell _had_ landed.

"My — my father won't let you take me," she told him, willing her voice to come out even, and largely succeeding, a bit to her own surprise; and _then_ , she saw his fingers, the ones wrapped around his wand, _twitch_ , and —

" _Affligus!_ " she yelled, he tumbled back against the far wall, but _Merlin_ , he was fast, for such a grey-looking man; she saw his wand slice in her direction —

" _Impe —_ "

" _Expelliarmus!_ " Luckily, she had already begun her follow-up spell, just as her father had so thoroughly impressed upon her during their hours of duelling lessons, and so she narrowly missed being hit with what she suspected would have been a very strong Impediment Jinx.

She was practically vibrating, by then, with nerves, and so she missed his wand as it arced by her, but when it clattered near her feet, she stepped on it, locking it to the floor with her foot; and if she needed proof that her mental capacity had returned, she noted with grim satisfaction that she managed to stay calm enough keep her wand arm steady, pointing it at the crumpled, gnarled man on the floor.

His eyes, both of them, brown and blue, glittered at her, reflecting the torchlight eerily.

"Careful, lass," he growled, not yet attempting to move from the floor, "I don't have any reason to take you anywhere, yet; but I daresay you're one more flick of that wand away from giving me one."

"Well, then," Calista heard herself say, above the mad fluttering of her heart, "I suppose I'd better make it a very good spell."

To her surprise, Moody chuckled.

"Well done!" he roared suddenly, startling her so much that she nearly dropped her wand; by the time she'd righted herself, he was already halfway to his feet. She swallowed, and pressed down harder with her foot, as if her life depended on keeping him from his wand, because for all she knew, it might.

"Vigilance! Nerve!" he added, drawing himself fully upright, now, "You've got some damn fine instincts, Lestrange, but you need to _commit_ to them —"

"What the hell did you just call m—arrgh!" Suddenly, Moody stuck his hand out, and the wand beneath her foot yanked itself free with such force that it nearly sent _her_ tumbling to the floor; she just barely caught herself, and in an instant, she was leaning against the door to her father's office, heart pounding madly, with a wand pointed between her eyes.

" _Expelliarmus_ ," Moody grunted, almost lazily, and her wand flew out of her hand; unlike her, he caught it, neatly.

"Wandless Summoning Charm," he told her, "Very useful."

He eyed her thoughtfully, and then: "Right, I forgot; you don't go by that name anymore, do you? Can't say I blame you, what with your mother's — _infamy_."

Calista exhaled, and now, when she desperately needed her mind to think quickly, it seemed to have finally slowed back to real-time. But something Moody had just said had given her an idea… if only she hadn't managed to land with her right arm wedged behind her, practically crushed against her father's door.

"The funny thing, though, _Calista_ —" the way he said her name made her skin crawl, and gods, there was something about it that was somehow, inexplicably _familiar_ , and that made it even more sinister. "Is that the name you've chosen instead doesn't have much more honour; if you knew half of what I do about your father —"

"Why don't you tell me then?" Calista prompted, hoping that she could distract him enough to shift her weight just slightly, so she could…

" _Locomotor Mortis!"_ Moody roared, and Calista landed hard on the stone floor, as her legs locked up beneath her; but it almost didn't matter, she realised wildly, because _her right hand was free_ …

"I'm not particularly interested in talking about your father," Moody said, and his voice came out in an odd croon that _again_ seemed eerily, but unplaceably _familiar_ , "I'd much rather discuss your mother — "

 _Subsisto_ , Calista mouthed, moving her fingers urgently into a familiar pattern, and suddenly, Moody froze, utterly still again, except for that blasted, unnerving eye of his.

She knew this version of her Freezing Charm would only hold as long as she continued the spell, and so she traced the runic shape, over and over again, moving her mouth over the Latin syllables.

If only he hadn't locked her damn legs up, she could have strode over to him and snatched her wand straight out of his gnarled, twisted fingers; but he had, and so she had to rely on her backup plan, which unfortunately meant she had to move very, very quickly.

 _Voco_ 'wand' _,_ she whispered, quickly, under her breath, rapidly shifting the pattern she was drawing with her finger, _Invitus_.

She had never been so glad, in her _life_ , to feel the smooth wood of her wand in her fingers; but as she'd feared, switching spells had released Moody from the grip of her Freezing Charm.

"So," Moody said, and if it were possible, he was now eyeing her even more intently than before, "Looks like I'm not the only one who can perform wandless magic, eh?"

Heart still racing, Calista readied herself for his next move, locking her eyes on the tip of his wand, and hoping fervently that Gerald's very specific Shield Charm lessons would pay off; if she could deflect whatever spell he cast next back onto him, she might have time to perform the counter-curse to the spell he'd put her under, and get the _hell_ out of here.

"Runes," Moody said, inexplicably still not casting, "I suppose it's not really all that surprising, eh? Your mother liked them, too."

 _Come on,_ she willed him mentally, _Cast_. _Do something._ She reckoned she had a very small chance of outmaneuvering him directly, again, but if she was quick enough with her counter, if she aimed the Charm just right…

"Very enlightening article, by the way," Moody went on, almost conversationally, "And now you've answered my first question — it's _not_ mere theory, eh?"

"Evidently not," Calista whispered, still gripping her wand tightly, eyes locked on Moody; and _then_ , the most curious thing happened — she saw his face _ripple_ , as if yet another chunk of skin were about to fall out of it, or —

But no, that was absurd; no sooner had she had the thought than she dismissed it as a trick of the torchlight, and then, unbelievably, Moody was _lowering his wand_.

"Snape's within his rights to be proud of you," he said, suddenly sounding somewhat _friendly_ , and then, as if to underscore the impression, he reached casually for the flask at his hip and unscrewed the top, taking a good long swig of whatever was in it.

"Clever lass," he continued, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, "Damn fine instincts, like I said, and one _hell_ of a Freezing Charm. Pity you're not a student, anymore; I reckon I'd enjoy teaching the likes of you."

"I — _what_?" Calista's brain faltered briefly, trying to make sense of this absurd new development, but her wand hand, at least, remained steady, or so she thought —

Moody flicked his wand, almost lazily.

" _Prot—_ " she started, but _then_ , suddenly, all of the feeling was rushing back into her legs, as Moody's countercurse took effect.

"Nice chat," Moody said, screwing the cap back on his flask, "But I'm afraid we'll have to end it here, for now. Dumbledore'll be missing me at the feast, and I've a mind to say hello to old Karkaroff."

He held out a hand, then, and she stared at it, blankly.

"Come on, lass, up you come," he said, motioning for her to take his hand, "I'll walk you to the feast — reckon that'll rile your father up, eh?"

"No, thank you," she said, quite coldly; something inside of her seemed to be positively _screaming_ at her not to trust the man, and even knowing that _something_ was undoubtedly the horror stories she'd grown up hearing about him from her mother and her cohorts, she lifted herself to her feet, leaning against the door behind her for the additional support, rather than accepting it from him. "I'm not planning on going to the feast."

Moody shrugged, then.

"Suit yourself," he said, and then, as if he _hadn't_ just spent the last several minutes utterly terrorizing her, he opened the door she'd come through and simply _left_ , sliding his hip flask back into its holster as he went.

"What the — what in the _hell_ —" Calista muttered to herself, even as she reached behind her, clawing at the doorknob, and even though Moody had ostensibly gone, she practically lunged through the doorway into her father's office, and then into his quarters beyond, performing the special locking charms and protective wards on the latter _three_ times to be absolutely certain they took.

"I'm still dreaming," she told herself, as panic caught up with her, and her limbs began to tremble violently, "I'm still out, I'm going mad, that's got to be it…."

Except she _knew_ she was awake, because the potions her father had been dosing her with all week had kept her from dreaming, and _besides_ , even her most vivid nightmares couldn't have conjured that creepy, darting, whizzing fucking _eye_ of his.

"Dad," she murmured, suddenly desperate to talk to him, to talk to _someone_ about what had just happened; and she didn't particularly care that he'd told her not to leave his quarters, but she realised she _couldn't_ go to him, because he was at that blasted feast, where Moody had just told her _he_ was going, and she'd rather _actually_ go swimming with the Giant Squid than risk running into him again, just now.

Her feet carried her into the familiar sanctuary of her father's study, and as soon as they had, her feet lit on a familiar little pot on the mantle of his fireplace, and she nearly grinned with relief. There _was_ someone she could talk to, if he happened to be…

Calista hurriedly through a pinch of calling Floo Powder into the grate.

"Hi, Chadwick," she said, when her call was answered, "I don't suppose — Is Gerald there?"

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Gerald, as it happened, _wasn't_ at Chadwick and Mira's when she'd called, but Chadwick had seemed relieved to see her face in the fire, and after quickly querying whether she was all right, he promised to _get_ Gerald over, and have him call her back.

However he'd gone to fetch his cousin, Chadwick had been remarkably efficient — she'd only had to wait perhaps ten minutes before the fire had crackled to life, and an instant later, Gerald's anxious face was peering at her through the flames.

They'd spoken for quite a long time; it took a great deal of insisting, on her part, that she was absolutely fine now, before Gerald would believe her, and an even greater deal of reassurances that what had happened had not been his fault, and _then_ , finally, she could tell him about her encounter with Moody.

Somehow, in the retelling, Moody's actions didn't sound quite as sinister as they'd _felt_ , and she realised while she was trying to explain it to Gerald that he wasn't seeing it in the same light that she had.

"I wonder if you could convince him to teach you," Gerald had murmured, evidently a bit awestruck, "I mean — he's a legend, really; you must have been terribly flattered when he complimented your duelling skills."

Calista had gaped into the fireplace. " _Flattered?"_ she recalled saying hoarsely, "No, not exactly; I was too busy wondering if he'd torture me _before_ he tried to drag me to Azkaban or after —"

Gerald's face had gone soft, then, as he'd undoubtedly realised his mistake.

" _Je suis désolée, mon colibri,_ " he'd said, quietly, "I didn't mean —"

"I know."

He'd looked very much like he wanted to reach through the fireplace and offer an embrace, or touch her shoulder, in the way that they had — but of course, one couldn't get to Hogwarts through the Floo network… _unless of course it's from my house_ , she thought, and then she had an idea…

Mentioning it to Gerald, however, had _not_ gone at all as she'd expected; as soon as she had suggested that he Apparate to her house and let himself in, so that she _could_ feel the ressuring comfort of his presence, Gerald had quietly begun to tell her a story that, by the time it reached its end, had her blood practically _boiling_.

"I know he was terribly worried about you," Gerald had said, "And I'm trying to take that into account, but I do think it's best, for now, if I avoid him, and… and I suppose he does have the right to ask that I not come to his home —"

"It's _my home too_ ," Calista had snarled, "And he had no right — _no right at all_ — to attack you!"

"I'm inclined to agree," Gerald had said, grimly, "But I don't want to make anything worse than it already is, especially considering that you're undoubtedly going to end up in the middle of whatever quarrels exist between he and I. Honestly, I'm questioning whether I should have even told you —"

"Of _course_ you should've told me," Calista had said, so forcefully that it had made her throat ache a bit, especially after several days with little use of her voice. "Why didn't you ever tell me _before_ that he had threatened legilimency against you?"

"Would it have convinced you to agree to teach me?" he'd wondered, hesitantly. "I did consider…"

"I would have made him stop," Calista had said, quaking with rage, "I would have — I would have —"

"Calista," Gerald had countered, quite gently, moments before she'd realised her father was due to return soon, and ended the call, "If there's one thing I've learned lately, it's that you can't change what anyone else will do; you can only change how you'll handle it when it happens."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Severus' eyes slid immediately to his open storeroom door. Amid his weary, anxious state, he managed to feel a spark of mingled amusement and exasperation, as he pushed the door shut, and spell-locked it.

"While I'm pleased you decided to make good use of your time," Severus began, as he entered the main corridor of his quarters, "I do wish that you'd lock —"

" _How dare you?_ "

Calista had come to occupy the doorway of his study, brows and nose positively _knit_ with rage, eyes flashing.

"How _dare_ you use legilimency against Gerald?" she continued, before he'd even had a chance to respond; and then it was _his_ eyes that were flashing, his brow that came crashing down.

"Ah — so you've been on the fire. Tell me, which part of 'don't talk to anyone' was unclear?"

"Don't deflect the question," she snapped, fiercely. "You told me not to _stop_ and talk to anyone on the way here — and anyway, that mad old Auror ruined _that_ plan —"

Something flared up in Severus, then; it was even greater, even more powerful than his rage.

" _What?"_

"Answer my question, first," Calista yelled, stubbornly, "Tell me why you thought you had the right to —"

" _What mad old Auror?_ " Severus heard himself hiss, through bared teeth, though there were hardly any alternatives she could have meant. His fingers latched onto his daughter's shoulder.

"Let go of me," she said, jerking her shoulder, but he found himself unable to; his fingers only clutched at her more tightly, even when he saw her wince, slightly.

"What mad old Auror, Calista? What happened?"

"Ow!" Calista jerked away again, this time lifting her other hand to pry his fingers off her shoulder, "Moody - who do you _think_? He was out there, outside your office, and —"

Severus hissed, taking a step forward, so that now Calista was fully in his study, and _he_ was blocking the door.

"We are not discussing another _thing,"_ he said, in a tone that left utterly no room for negotiation, "Until you tell me exactly what happened with Moody."

Even through her obvious ire with him, he could see in Calista's retelling of the encounter that it had shaken her, but he questioned her incessantly, having her retell it three or four times until he was certain he had all of the details.

"I will be having words with the Headmaster about this," he said, and then: "You aren't hurt, are you?"

"Not by Moody," she said, squaring her shoulders defiantly once more. "Not — not permanently, anyway. But _you_ — how could you attack Gerald?"

"He entered my home uninvited —"

" _Our_ home," Calista snapped, "And _I_ invited him to come whenever he wants to —"

"Yes, and _that_ , giving out the charms to our front door, is another conversation —"

"You're deflecting again," Calista accused heatedly, "Because you _know_ you've done something awful."

" _I_ have done something awful?" Severus narrowed his eyes. "Did Boot happen to tell you what he told the staff at St. Mungo's, about how you'd been injured?"

 _There_. He hadn't initially intended to tell her, thinking perhaps that he owed Boot at least that one secret, for everything else that had happened. He waited for the tide of her anger to shift, with a bittersweet sense of anticipation.

" _Yes_ ," Calista utterly floored him by saying, "He did; unlike you, he doesn't keep things from me."

Severus felt his mouth pull into a vicious snarl. "He admitted to outing you as a legilimens?" he clarified, despite knowing full well that the mediwizard hadn't seemed to believe Boot anyway, "And you still have the audacity to be cross with _me_?"

"The evidence," Calista said, glaring coldly in a perfect imitation of him that would have made him laugh hysterically under nearly any other circumstances, "Does seem to suggest that, now doesn't it?"

"Enough," Severus said, setting his mouth grimly, and injecting a forceful air of authority into his voice, "This discussion is at an end; now, let me test your barriers —"

" _No_ ," Calista said, every bit as firmly; she stepped forward, so they were nearly toe-to-toe, and it struck him that he could see almost directly into her eyes, now; he might have had an inch of height on her, these days, at best. "That isn't how it works, anymore. We're _both_ adults, and you've done something unspeakably awful to me, and to someone I care about, and I expect you to answer for it."

"If that's the way you think this is going to go, I have some devastating news for you —" He lifted his wand, as if to banish this line of conversation.

"Don't do it," Calista warned him, quietly. "Don't try to test me, when I've already said no; I swear I'll never forgive you, if you do."

"Well," Severus said, but _damn it_ , her words were like teeth, tearing into his gut, "If you're really as recovered as you claim, then you should be able to withstand the test, and it won't matter."

Calista gaped, and then she let out a hollow, humourless choke of laughter.

"Of course it would still matter," she said, "If you really think it doesn't — that's the whole fucking _point_ —"

"I won't have you speaking to me like that!" he yelped, almost piteously; how had he lost control of this situation so bloody _quickly_? And why couldn't he just do what she obviously wanted, and fucking _apologize_?

"Oh, I think we both know we're beyond that," she said, and he could not quite shake the eerie sense that he had somehow managed to broadcast his last thought to her; and _then_ —

"What did you ask Gerald not to tell me?"

It was Severus' turn to gape, as another one of those wretched teeth tore into him. " _What?_ "

"You told him something," she said, and the teeth were in his throat now, because he couldn't quite find any words to reply, "And you said 'Calista doesn't know'."

"This is…" he swallowed, and felt something sharp. "This is utterly irrelevant…"

"Actually, it's not," Calista said, "All week, you've been asking me what went wrong; why my mind snapped the way it did — and that was it, that was the breaking point. I started to see Gerald's memory of that day, the conversation with you, and I… I _couldn't_ betray his trust, by viewing it, so I created another barrier, to hide it from myself."

No; she couldn't possibly have been so reckless as to let her her own defences down, in a room full of people — And yet… it might explain, where nothing quite had yet, why she had been in pain for _so_ long, when he'd only expected to need to give her the potions for three or or four days, at most.

"So," he snarled, "You decided to throw _everything_ I've ever taught you into the rubbish bin, and leave yourself utterly open to attack just to protect _one_ memory of Boot's?"

"Of course I didn't," she said scornfully, and a flicker of odd relief flared up, only to be quickly extinguished when she added:

"I'd never let my own barriers down — I kept them up, _and_ the one I'd built in his mind, to keep the worst of his memories back while he was testifying. I just… I thought I had a little more left than I did, to hide one more thing."

 _No._ It was not possible; he must have misunderstood, or she simply didn't want to admit, now, to how reckless she had been.

"You — " he sputtered, clutching urgently at her shoulder once more. "No. You must be remembering wrong, or you're lying. You let your own barriers down, in order to create one for him—"

"No," she insisted, "I didn't. I wouldn't. I'm not _stupid_. I told you already, I was keeping them _all_ up, all three of mine and one in his mind, before everything went wrong."

 _Fuck_ , was his first thought, followed very swiftly by, _Dumbledore can never know that she can do this,_ and once he'd realised that, the list of people who _could never know_ was enough to send a shiver straight through his spine.

"I never taught you that," he said, "I never _once_ asked you to try performing occlumency in any mind but your own."

"Maybe if you _had_ , we wouldn't be in this bloody mess," she snarled, "Now, stop deflecting from what _you_ did!"

"I never taught you how to perform occlumency in two minds simultaneously," Severus told her, very softly, utterly ignoring her last point, "Because you're not supposed to be able to _do_ it."

"What? That's ridiculous, _of course_ it can be done; you did it with me, more than once."

"No," Severus told her, grimly, "I didn't. I can't. Every time I've ever performed occlumency in your mind, I had to drop my own barriers to do so. That's why I've employed it so sparingly, and why I never asked you to try."

"That's not true; it _can't_ be true."

"Come, now, Calista; you've known since you were twelve years old that it is not possible to practise legilimency on more than one person at a time — why would you think the rules of occlumency are any different?"

For a moment, he saw her expression open up; he could see a question in her face, a sense of disbelief, an undeniable spark of pride — but then, she seemed to come to a realisation, or a conclusion, and she shook her head, closing herself off, again.

"You're lying," she said, decisively, "You just wanted to change the subject, so you don't have to apologise for what you did to Gerald."

"At the moment, I don't give a dragon's hind end about the Boot boy," Severus snapped, and he could tell immediately that it was the wrong thing to say; her face went utterly hard, eyes dark with something he didn't want to name; the teeth that had been gnawing at his insides for the better potion of their conversation suddenly felt like basilisk fangs.

"I need you to show me," Severus said, quickly, hoping that the urgency in his words would reach her, even through that _look_ , "I need to see whether you can really do what you say."

"Are you mad? Why would I put myself through that again? You think I want to spend another week here, with _you_?"

The loathing in her words, in her eyes was not new. He had seen it countless times; when she was small, and he'd dragged her bodily from the Owlery just before she'd nearly lost an eye to a stray talon; when she was only a very little bit older and been told she could not enter the Forbidden Forest; when the Chamber had been opened, and he'd threatened to pull her from her Prefect patrols; time and time again, and _always_ , he had been able to ignore it, but _this time_ …

An apology rose up in his throat. This time was perhaps the _first_ time that he had ever felt he _deserved_ that look, and he opened his mouth to admit it.

"I — " _fuck._ The words were like glass in his throat. "I spent all week taking care of you," he heard himself say, which were _completely the wrong words, what in the hell was wrong with him?_ "And this is how you thank me?"

He let himself slip aside, as soon as he had said the words, knowing what was next. She would storm past him, down the hall, and slam the door to the tiny bedroom he'd never managed to reclaim, hard enough to make the loose items on the mantle and on his desk rattle, and in the morning, when her stormcloud eyes glared at him across the now-unfamiliar table, he would have to spit out the shards of his apology as sincerely as possible, and _then_ he could finally test her barriers, and her dubious claims…

"Calista? What are you doing?"

Her fingers were already in the pot of Floo powder by the time he realised she _wasn't_ storming past him; by the time he'd snatched for her shoulder, again, she'd already thrown a handful in and spoken their home address.

"You will stay here," he snarled, intending to pull her bodily back into the room, but she was prepared this time, and she wrenched her shoulder away viciously, leaving him clutching desperately at air.

"I thought I told you," she said, "This isn't how it works, anymore."

" _Calista!_ " he snarled, but it was into thin air; Calista had already gone. The fire crackled in her wake, deceptively merry.


	13. Cold

**13\. Cold**

 _Calista feels her heart begin to race, as she approaches the familiar door; she wants to turn back, but for some reason, she cannot._

 _She does not want to open the door, and face the pitch blackness that she already knows, now, hides an enemy, but her hand moves, anyway. It is not quite that she can't control her own movements; it is like she is a moth, and the darkness a flame._

 _The urge to move forward is so deep that it feels instinctual, so perhaps her comparison is more apt than she even realises. She places her hand at the knob, opens the door, and steps into the darkness._

' _Lumos,' she must say, because that is the script she followed the first time, though logic would dictate she ought to go right for the torch on the wall._

 _In the flash of light, she sees Moody's formidable silhouette. She's sick of this dream, and she tries, as she always does, to change it._

 _She's tried a catalogue of spells, but somehow, every incantation she attempts still comes out the same._

' _Sectumsempra!' she mouths this time, a spiteful rebellion against the dream, but of course, her voice rings out the same, again, regardless: 'Immobulus!'_

 _She hears the clatter of her wand on the floor, scrapes her hand over the rough stone, and picks it up, and_ then _, she swings her wand towards the torch, for the only part of the dream that ever deviates from the incident that inspires it._

 _The torch flickers to life, though it is never nearly as bright in the dream as it was in reality, the first time. She squints through the vague half-light, knowing there is only a second or two at most before the dream will end, and she will either wake fitfully, or be plunged immediately into another._

 _She cannot see, this night or any other, a face. She cannot properly see hair colour, or stature, or anything else that might help her identify the figure; what she_ can _see, quite plainly, is that the silhouette of the figure is straight-backed and lean, that it has no wild mass of long, grey hair; she can see only that the figure is decidedly_ not _Mad-Eye Moody._

' _Who are you?' she calls out, in a frustrated howl, but the torchlight is already fading around her._

"—Rroo?"

Gerald opened his eyes, jolted awake by mumbling in his ear; it only took an instant for him to match it with the restless movement beside him, and he lifted himself carefully up on his elbows, reaching in the darkness towards the sound and the movement.

"Calista," he whispered, shifting himself carefully closer, "It's all right, you're —"

He heard an indrawn breath, and suddenly, she was sitting up beside him, fingers clawing out for something to her left. Unfortunately, that _something_ turned out to be Gerald's face. He ducked away from the worst of it, just in time, catching her hand in his.

"It's just me," he murmured, urgently, and a bit sleepily, "Everything's fine. You were dreaming."

He heard her exhale, and then, abruptly, she yanked her hand out of his.

"Sorry," he heard her mutter, as she scrambled out of the blankets, "I just — I don't know what the hell is wrong with me."

With one hand, Gerald reached for her again, catching her shoulder, and stopping her evident flight. His other hand quested in the same direction hers had done, and where her fingers had failed to find her wand, his landed squarely on his glasses. He settled them on his face, which didn't help the darkness, but it did make the shapes within it a bit more distinct.

"There's nothing wrong with you," he said, quietly but firmly, "Unless there's something wrong with me, too."

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out certain elements of her profile - wide, dark eyes, a pale sliver of her cheek beneath the blackness of her hair, and — ah; the stern curve of a frown.

"I'm so sick of this blasted dream," she finally said, and he felt her shoulder cave beneath his hand, in defeat. "The one where I have to relive that awful duel with Mad-Eye Moody."

He shifted a little closer, and squeezed her shoulder, an attempt at comfort.

"I'm sorry, _mon cœur._ Is there anything I can do?"

"No. Not unless you know how I can stop _having_ it."

He frowned, thoughtfully.

"Well," he said quietly, mindful of his mother sleeping in the next room, "I have read several different books that suggest recurring dreams stem from some sort of unresolved conflict. Perhaps… perhaps it's because there was something you wanted to say or do, and didn't?"

He saw her brows knit briefly together, in the shadows.

"That sounds like Muggle rubbish," she said suspiciously, "What sort of book did you find that in?"

Gerald felt himself flush. "A — er, well, I've seen it in psychology books."

She nodded; he felt her hair brush over the hand that still rested on her shoulder.

"Muggle rubbish," she confirmed, and Gerald felt a flash of irritation.

 _One_ , he reminded himself internally, _Two, three._ He took a breath.

"I'm admittedly surprised to hear you say that, considering the number of volumes from the same genre you're still borrowing from me."

 _Damn_. He hadn't sounded quite as unruffled as he'd intended; but Calista didn't seem to take offence, at least not to his tone.

"That's _different_ ," she scoffed, "We don't have any of our own books that properly address… _those_ sorts of things, but _dreams_ … what do Muggles know about that? I'm certain they don't even believe in Seers and prophetic dreams, and —"

"As a matter of fact," he said, cutting her off with mild impatience, but softening the blow by taking her free hand in his, "They do. I'd be happy to lend you one of the books, if you'd like."

She was quiet for a moment, and then: "What… what else do they have about dreams, in these Muggle books? I mean — since I'm definitely _not_ a Seer, and the thing with Moody's already happened, anyway…"

"Well, there are some that offer interpretations for symbols and themes in dreams. Some that try to explain recurring dreams, like I said, and… oh, all sorts of things. Some books are better than others, of course. I would personally recommend checking the author's qualifications, as you would with any reference book."

"So…" she shifted, lying down again; he noted that she kept her back to him, but turned her head, so her whispered voice would carry. "So you really think it could be… some perfectly mundane reason I'm having this dream all the time? Something even Muggles could explain… and it's _not_ because something awful is going to happen that it's trying to warn me about?"

Gerald eased himself down, as well, frowning softly.

"I can't say for certain, _mon cœur_ , but as you said, you're not a Seer." he felt himself smirk slightly, despite the levity of the conversation. "At least, not that we know of yet. Honestly, at this point, I wouldn't put it past you to be hiding another incredible talent."

He reached for her, lightly placing a hand at her shoulder; when she didn't protest, he drew closer, and began to rub the top of her back gently, while nestling his chin near her shoulder. She stirred, and for a moment, he thought she would pull herself away, but she was only lifting her head to speak again.

"I probably am hiding another talent," she murmured, and he thought he caught a bit of a teasing note, "But it isn't that. I'm definitely not a Seer. I can't be; I don't even like tea."

Gerald chuckled, and pulled her close. He pressed his mouth to the side of her neck, enjoying the tickle of her hair on his nose, the warm, steady beat of her pulse under his lips. Perhaps more than anything, he allowed himself to enjoy the feel of her in his arms, shoulder tucked under his chin. It was hard to imagine his own terrors, his own nightmares, could ever find him in this way, with his _colibri_ , his rune, right here by his heart.

It gave him courage, not only against the dark of the night and whatever visions it might hold, but for something else; something he'd delayed coming to a decision on for weeks, first while he'd waited for the trial to come to an end, and then while Calista had been unwell, and then… well, and then for no other reason, except that he was quite afraid he would not get the response he wanted. But, she was _here_ , after all, and she had been here several times in the last few weeks, even though he knew she felt awkward about staying here, with Terry's things strewn about everywhere and his mother in the next room.

"Calista?" he murmured, by her ear; he suspected, a bit guiltily, from the sleepy sluggishness of her response that he had woken her.

"Mm?"

"There's something… something I'd like you to come do with me, on Saturday, if you'd be willing…"

"I've already promised Aunt Narcissa I'll come for dinner," she whispered, and he nodded into her shoulder, simultaneously disappointed and relieved, but then, she added: "I can come during the day, though. What is it?"

His heart skipped, and then picked up speed. "It's — erm — it's… well…"

 _One, two, three._ He took a calming breath, and forced the words out, hesitating only slightly.

"I'm looking at a few different flats on Saturday, and I… I was hoping you might come with me, and… erm, help me decide."

"Oh." He thought he heard her breath catch, for an instant, but when he tried to listen, it was even; still… was it really only his _own_ heart that was hammering now?

"Of course I'll come, if you want company," Calista said, finally, "But — I admit, I don't really know how I'm meant to help you decide where _you_ want to live."

 _Merlin give me strength._ Gerald forced himself to mirror her even breathing, but his nerves made it feel more like a gasp. She must have heard it, too; and when he pressed his mouth briefly to her neck, again, he was certain that her pulse was quicker, now, than it had been moments ago.

"I… I think you know why I'd want your approval," Gerald murmured quietly, "I'm —"

He swallowed, a lump of nerves caught in his throat, and then he forced himself to push on; he had already begun, and it would not help to turn back now.

"I'm hoping that once I have my own flat, you will… well, _mon cœur,_ I'm hoping you'll spend a lot of time there with me, and… and so I want it to be someplace that you like."

She was quiet for a devastatingly long stretch of time, during which his own nerves continued to ratchet higher. There was an odd little spike of panic somewhere in the back of his mind that made him think for an instant that she had cried out, perhaps in protest of his idea — but no, when her voice finally came, it was quite soft.

"How much time do you want me to spend there?"

"As much as —" _possible;_ he cut himself off at the last second. No; he could already tell that this wasn't going the way he'd hoped, and if he pushed, she was certain to refuse entirely; hadn't he already learned that, when he'd pressed her about the Occlumency lessons?

"As much as you want to," he finally settled for. Seconds of agonising silence passed, and then, _finally_ :

"All right. I'll look at them with you."

He smiled, against her ear, and kissed the edge of it lightly; for a few moments, he allowed himself to imagine that _this_ , holding her tightly in the dark, surrounded by the scent of her hair, might become his everyday reality; for a few moments, it seemed possible that neither of them would need to face a nightmare alone, again —

And then, carefully, evidently thinking he was already asleep, Calista withdrew from his arms. The bed was small, and she didn't have very far to go; Gerald suppressed a sigh, and eased himself further to the other side, giving her enough space to lie there without touching him; and then he remembered why they were awake in the first place.

 _Je suis désolée, mon colibri. Je suis désolé je ne suis pas comme une étoile brillante pour vous, mais il semble que le thestral brille beaucoup plus brillante qu'un simple hibou._

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

It did not escape Calista that the only people who truly seemed to understand Calista's fear following her encounter with Moody were the same people who were likely to have had cause to fear him themselves, at some point in their lives; her father understood, or at least it had seemed like he did, before their row had reduced them to barely civil sentences, and quick exits, whenever they met.

Aunt Narcissa and Uncle Lucius had understood, perhaps even better than her father had. Uncle Lucius had immediately filed an additional complaint against Moody to the school governors, though Calista wasn't technically a student anymore; and though she knew it would likely help bolster his earlier complaint on Draco's behalf, her uncle had managed to leave her, somehow, with the impression that it wasn't his only reason. Aunt Narcissa, for her part, had pulled Calista into a perfumed embrace that had been embarrassingly comforting, considering her age and the show of independence she'd been making, these last few weeks, to her father.

She had ended up staying there, at the manor, more nights than she stayed at home for a during those weeks; it was not her favourite place to be, but since _home_ really was and _home_ seemed ready to swallow her up in empty silence, most days she could no longer bear to sleep there.

She had stayed a few times at Tonks' new flat, and a few times with Gerald and his mother, but since she'd had the blasted Moody nightmare now in both places, waking them _both_ up, staying with either of them was beginning to feel as daunting as simply being home alone.

At least if she had the dream at Aunt Narcissa's, her room was far enough away from everyone else that she didn't wake them, or at least, she hadn't yet; and it was better, somehow, to drift through their cavernous halls when she woke, knowing that her aunt and uncle were sleeping peacefully nearby, even glimpsing light underneath their bedroom door sometimes, than to stare morosely at the empty blankness of her fireplace, waiting for dawn to arrive.

"Calista? Everything all right?"

Calista started out of her bitter reverie, lifting her gaze from her nearly untouched plate; it swept by her Aunt Andromeda, who was always asking her that question lately, and _should_ have been the voice she'd heard it in that time; and then it settled on the man to her aunt's left, whose grey eyes were trained on her quite intently, leaving no doubt as to who had actually spoken.

"Yes," she lied, evenly, to Sirius Black, "Everything is fine."

He nodded slowly, and then: "The puffskein thing work out all right?"

"Yes," she said again, nodding this time, and secretly relieved for the chance to think about something, _anything_ besides the Moody incident; she'd made the mistake of telling them all about it, tonight, and like Gerald and Amelia, they seemed to find the duel more flattering than frightening; she was trying not to listen to their conversation, now, about Tonks' own training days under Moody's tutelage. "Yes, it worked almost exactly like you said."

Sirius grinned, and fleetingly, he looked jarringly younger; for an instant, it seemed to dredge up an old flash of memory, and she realised with a start that she could still see the small scar, near his eye, where she had scratched him so many years ago.

"Knew it'd be an embedded Hovering Charm," he said, seemingly unable to resist gloating, "That's how I'd have done it, back in my Hogwarts days — what was it on, anyway? Something they ate, or something attached to them?"

"You'll never believe it," Calista said, "But it turned out the charm was embedded in their _teeth_ , which of course should be impossible — charms generally can't be embedded to organic material. So, I suppose you can imagine what my _next_ assignment is, now that I've finally got them to stop floating…"

"False teeth," Sirius said at once; Calista blinked.

"Er — what?"

"Extraction charm," Sirius explained, "To take their real teeth out, and then you implant the Charmed teeth in their place. I'd make them sharper, too, if I had done it, just for a bit more sport."

Calista lifted her brow. " _Did_ you do it? Those blasted things have teeth like razors."

Sirius barked a short laugh. "Wouldn't have given you the answer, if it was me that had done it," he admitted, "But I'd like to shake the undoubtedly nastily scarred hand of whoever did." He tilted his head, uncannily like a dog. "Where did you say they were found, again?"

"I have no idea," Calista said, "Mr. Weasley — my friend's dad, from the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts office — brought them to our department, and all he said was they were uncovered in a Ministry raid, but he was a bit vague on the details."

Sirius nodded, and then, a bit sheepishly: "I was only wondering, because if they came from Hogwarts… well, you might've been able to blame me, still. I seem to recall leaving an awful lot of notes with my, erm — _ideas_ — behind, before I left the place. Gryffindor tradition."

Calista could hardly suppress a small smile, at that; she thought first of the book she'd inherited from Kim Avery and eventually left to Eva Selwyn, and then of Gerald's lists.

"I don't think that particular tradition is limited to Gryffindor, actually."

"It's not," Tonks interjected brightly, from beside Calista, "I found a diagram of all the Prefect patrol routes behind a portrait of Bridget Wenlock in the common room in my third year, and made copies for my entire dormitory."

Calista gaped. "Seriously? _That_ explains why I almost never caught any Hufflepuffs after curfew. I thought you lot were just more well-behaved."

Tonks snorted. "You've met me, haven't you? Want any more carrots, Calista?"

"No, I haven't finished —" she glanced down at her plate, at her fork raised above it, and realised to her shock that she _had_ finished her carrots, after all. At some point during her conversation with Sirius, she had practically cleaned her plate. A single bite remained on her fork, and she stuffed it into her mouth, as Tonks set the bowl of carrots back in its place.

"You know," Tonks added, "You shouldn't keep reminding me you were a Prefect, it's my least favourite thing about you."

Sirius chuckled. "I don't know," he mused, "Having a Prefect friend wasn't all bad, _especially_ one like Moony — he'd lecture us all right, but we all knew he'd cover our tracks when old Snivel— erm — I mean —"

Calista had thrown her fork down with such an intense clatter that every single one of them around the table started.

" _Don't call him that_."

"Ah, shite," Tonks muttered, as Sirius did his best to backpedal.

"If that's what 'Moony' was really like as a Prefect," Calista snarled, "Then kindly _don't_ compare me to him — because I actually did what I was supposed to do, which is _stop_ arseholes like you lot from bullying other students!"

"Bullying — listen here, Calista, I'm not proud of what we did —"

"It sounds very much like you are!"

" — but it wasn't _bullying_ ; you may not want to hear it, but there are two sides to every story, and two wizards in every duel, and your father was hardly a saint."

Calista rose from the table, and it was something more than rage that was swimming, suddenly, in her blood; something foul and heavy and oily, and it made her wonder, briefly, if she was going to lose all those carrots she'd evidently eaten.

"Two wizards?" she heard herself say, quite coldly, "Are you certain of that? Because the way _I've_ heard the stories, it was more like four against one."

"Of course he'd tell you that," Sirius said, frowning and getting to his feet as well, "He wants you to see him in a good light, but I'm telling you, he had his allies, nearly all of whom grew up into Death Eaters —"

"Sirius, stop!" Andromeda interjected, but it was too late; Calista had a challenge in her eyes, and Sirius met it, pressing on doggedly.

"— and I don't know that _any_ of them were into the Dark Arts as thick as Sn — as your father was."

Calista's blood was thundering in her ears; the fingers of her right hand were twitching.

"So," she said, and if she had been able to hear herself clearly, she might have marvelled at how evenly her tone came out, despite the maelstrom in her insides, "Using an unregistered werewolf as a murder weapon — that's not what you'd consider part of the Dark Arts, then?"

She never got to hear his answer; Tonks stepped between them then, ushering Calista into the next room, and behind her, she could hear Andromeda berating Sirius in a hushed whisper.

" — all she had for _years_ , Sirius —"

"You've got to remember," Tonks said quietly, while Calista still burned hot and cold with suppressed rage, "He was our age when he was locked up, and that's got to mess with someone's mind. Mum says his school days aren't that far behind him, as far as his memory works…"

"Good," Calista snapped, "Then he should be able to remember trying to _murder_ my father."

"Yeah, I was going to ask — the werewolf thing you said — what's that all about?"

"Ask him; I think I'd like to hear his side of the story."

"Erm — yeah, that sounds like a bollocks idea to me just now. Reckon you'll blast his head off if you don't like it."

"Of course I wouldn't," Calista said, and for a moment, Tonks' relief was palpable; and then, Calista finished her sentiment: "I'd do something much more creative than _that_."

"Merlin's balls, you sound just like Snape — not an insult, by the way, just an observation, so calm your tits."

Ted came into the room, then; he cast a brief, assessing look at Tonks and Calista, and then he sighed.

"Calista, may I speak with you for a moment?"

Some of the rage was fading, now that Sirius was out of her sight; but the rest of it, the heavy, sludgy feeling that seemed to weigh her very organs down — that stayed firmly in place, even as she grudgingly nodded to Ted, who hadn't actually done anything wrong.

"I know you're rightly upset," Ted said quietly, "And I think my daughter may have already tried to explain to you why Dromeda and I think Sirius can speak — ah, rashly — at times, but I've got to ask you…"

"I'm not apologising to him."

"I have to ask you, Calista, no matter how upset you are, not to tell anyone where he's been hiding."

"That's the only reason you came in here? _I'm_ not the one that — that turns people over to things that want to kill them! That's _him_."

He sighed again, and shook his head, before starting new.

"Firstly, Sirius did ask me to apologise to _you_ , since Dromeda and I both agreed that him doing so himself was probably not the best option at the moment. He… it seemed important to him that you understand, he doesn't much like your father, but he regrets what he said to you."

Calista felt her face twist into a scowl. "Regrets what he said to me? How about what he _did_ to my father?"

"I can't comment on that, since what little I've heard tonight is the first I've heard of it," Ted said, carefully, "But it's my understanding that the two of you were civil, despite that, before tonight."

The heavy, slick feeling sloshed around inside her again, and at last, she was able to identify it:

 _Guilt_.

"I shouldn't be here," Calista said quietly, and the words dropped like stones into her already heavy gut, "Not while he's here. I'm going h—" _fuck_ ; the image of the dark, empty house on Spinner's End loomed, and she choked on her words.

"I'm going," she amended, and she pulled her suddenly leaden body upright.

It was only then, as she stood up to leave, that she saw the book she'd left by the front door, remembered her reason — her excuse — for coming here, this time.

She picked the book up, and just in time; when she turned back, Ted looked suspiciously like he might try to hug her.

"Here," she said, practically shoving the book into his arms, instead. "It's — I borrowed it from work. It's about the enchantments on the Goblet of Fire. I thought… I thought _he_ might want to read it, since no one knows how his godson's name came out of the blasted thing."

"Calista, dear —"

"No," she said, though no one had asked her a question, and then: "Good bye."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Gerald led the way, hopefully but cautiously, up the third flight of rickety stairs they'd encountered that morning, carefully gripping the key from the elderly woman on the ground level who owned the building.

"This is the one I'm most excited about," he said, looking over his shoulder at Calista; she followed him up, and her expression, her body language — she looked _fine_ , and she'd said she was every time he asked, and yet…

He took her hand, and it was cold; he laid the palm of his other hand gently at her back, wanting her to see the place before he did, and she flinched, almost imperceptibly.

"I'm sorry," she said, and she stepped away from him, pushing open the door at the other end of the tiny mudroom, and stepping into the room beyond.

"Oh, wow," she said, quietly, and a moment later, when he stepped in beside her, he found himself saying precisely the same thing.

The flat was quite small; in fact, he could see most of it from where he was standing, and it was none too pristine, either; the hardwood floors were scratched and worn, and peeling paper adorned the walls of the eat-in kitchen that took up half of the living space they could see; what little he could glimpse of the bathroom through the battered door at the far end of the kitchen promised more of the same, and there was only a tatty curtain guarding what he presumed was the bedroom, at the other side of the flat.

Still, he and Calista circled the main room of the flat practically in stride.

"The only place I've seen so many bookshelves," Gerald marveled, "Is at _your_ house; look, the whole living room's _filled_ with them."

It was true; they made up every single wall in the room, pausing only for a couple of windows on the east wall and the narrow space where the tatty curtain hung; even a low half wall, which partially separated the main room from the kitchen and looked decidedly newer than the rest of the woodwork in the home, had been fitted with bookshelves on both sides.

He kept wandering, which was absurd, he supposed, considering how small the place really was — but it was impossible not to start mentally arranging his books on the shelves, and imagining a good selection of hers among them, too.

He found himself, by way of following the half wall around, in the kitchen, and though it was slightly grimy, and the cupboards were nearly as worn as the floor, it was actually quite _large_ , compared to his mother's kitchen. It was even larger than the one at Calista's house, and it had a fireplace, thank Merlin.

The bathroom was tiny, and a bit dank, but it _too_ was fitted with shelves along the walls, and though he could not bring himself to expose any books to that sort of moisture, he supposed it would make an excellent place to store towels and linens, and there was certainly space for more than one person's things…

When he first emerged back into the main part of the flat, he thought that Calista had gone; but then, he heard a soft metal-on-metal sound, and then a tiny gasp, and the flat was flooded with light from the direction of what had to be the bedroom.

It was an oddly-sized room, very long and not very deep, and — Merlin's beard, _the bedroom had bookshelves, too_ , the listing really hadn't done him wrong — but it was the one wall, again on the east, that wasn't covered with bookshelves that had captured Calista's attention.

"It's so bright," she marvelled, seemingly enraptured by the floor-to-ceiling windows, and _then_ —

"Merlin — look, it's not a window, it's a _door_ — Gerald, there's a _balcony_."

He grinned. "I know; the listing said there was one, although I didn't realise it was off the bedroom."

He investigated the door, but it was locked, and the landlady had only given him the one key; so he tapped his wand to it, instead.

' _Alohomora',_ he murmured, and he heard the _click_ of the lock opening; immediately, Calista pulled the door open, and stepped out, and he followed her.

The balcony was made of painted wrought iron that was flaking and rusty and had definitely seen better days, and it was hardly large enough for the two of them to stand on together, but still; it _was_ a balcony, and it was the only one he'd seen on a listing that was even remotely near his price range.

It was a cloudy, chilly December day, and the cold rain spitting from the sky soon drove them back inside, but even on such a grey day, it was astounding how much brighter the glass door, and the tall window beside it, made the room.

There was one other astounding thing, about the place, at least in Gerald's eyes, and perhaps it was foolish, but Calista's enchantment with the bookshelves and the balcony made him bold enough to mention it.

"There's room for a double bed, if we put it against this wall," he said, gesturing to the one opposite the balcony, "And then, we could fit a couple more bookshelves, on _this_ wall, and …" he swallowed, when she turned, and he could see a soft frown, pulling the corners of her mouth down. He stopped himself from pointing out that even her enormous wardrobe, courtesy of her aunt, looked like it would fit along the other long wall.

"I — erm — I don't think I'll stay the night often enough for you to justify changing your furniture."

Gerald blinked, and frowned. He should have expected this; he _had_ expected this, after the other night, but then she'd seemed to really like the place, and he'd gone and let himself get carried away again, like an idiot.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, "I don't mean to make it sound as if I expect you to… erm, to be here all the time, but — I suppose I had rather hoped, since you've stayed over a few times recently, that you might _also_ want to do that here, where — erm, well, where my Mum isn't always in the next room."

It wasn't only the obvious reason why that had grated on him, either, and he'd suspected it was the same for Calista; when his mother was around, they had to be very careful about what they said out loud; there were only certain things that having a Muggle relative gave him leeway for, under the Statute of Secrecy; generally, if his mother didn't _need_ to know it, he wasn't supposed to tell her, and he certainly wasn't supposed to use magic in her presence if it wasn't strictly necessary.

"I don't have to sleep here for us to have sex," Calista pointed out, which made his face immediately warm.

"I — _mon cœur_ , that wasn't — that's not the reason I want — that I was hoping you would…" he swallowed. "I like to sleep with you," he said, and his flush deepened as he realised how that had sounded. "I mean, erm, literally. When I sleep, I… I like to have you near me, to…"

 _I like to cuddle_ , he wanted to say, but he could practically _hear_ Chadwick taking the piss out of him for that one, and he honestly wasn't certain that Calista wouldn't either. Perhaps if he said it in French, near her ear…

But she didn't seem to have any intention of allowing that to happen; she folded her arms about herself, and her frown deepened.

"I don't think that's a very good idea," she said, "Not after what happened the last time."

He racked his brain, trying to remember what she could be talking about, what had happened the last time she'd stayed with him, but nothing had really happened, unless… unless she counted his asking her to look at flats with him. He frowned, now, too, and eyed her carefully, trying to see whether she really didn't want to be here, with him, or whether, like it had been at his cousin's wedding, she was guarding herself against an imagined rejection.

" _Mon colibri_ ," he finally asked, gently, " _What_ happened last time?"

"Seriously?" her brow went up, voice twisting painfully. "You don't remember me waking you up with — with that stupid dream?"

 _Ah._ Gerald stepped closer, and reached tentatively for her hand; she didn't immediately yank it back, but she didn't twine her fingers with his, either. She seemed to be undecided.

"It happens to me, too," he reminded her quietly.

"Never when I'm with you," she muttered back, unhappily. "It's not as often; it's not the same. You know it's not."

"I suspect, _mon colibri_ ," Gerald murmured, curving the palm of his other hand against her shoulder, and pressing gently, "That it does not happen to me as often lately _because_ you are with me."

Her frown deepened, and she pulled her hand from his, twisting the fingers of her own hands together, either to combat the tension he could feel in her shoulder, or — more likely, he thought — to keep him from taking it up again.

"I suppose that's why I always — I always want to fall asleep holding on to you," he ventured, but he couldn't quite finish whatever pretty speech he might have made, not when she had just reminded him, by taking her hand back, that when he woke up again — from a dream, or simply because it was time to — they were always apart. Nor did he mention the evidence he would often find, fitted carefully into her place that told him she had done it intentionally: a pillow, a balled-up bit of blanket; he could wake up with his arms around anything, except for her.

"I think it's best if I just stay alone, or stay at Aunt Narcissa's," she whispered, seemingly unable to keep a note of bitterness from crawling into her voice, "At least she's — at least they're used to me acting mental."

Gerald sighed softly, for more than one reason. He wished she'd stop saying things like that, not only for her _own_ sake, but now he had to try, again, not to wonder what she would think on the night that their roles inevitably _were_ reversed, when it was him waking in a blind panic and a cold sweat. He _hoped_ she would understand, that she would not look at him differently, after; but perhaps she would be just as hard on him as she was on herself.

He swallowed, feeling an uncomfortable burning in his throat, and behind his eyes, once he had allowed his mind to wander down that path.

"You're not mental," he told her, for what felt like the hundredth time; and then he sighed, lifting his hand from her shoulder, and digging in his pocket, for the rental key. "I suppose we'd better bring this back, before the landlady thinks we nicked it."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

"Have you even been back home?" Gerald asked, as they walked through the drizzly rain through her neighborhood. After seeing the last flat, Gerald had insisted on seeing her home, even though he was no longer welcome to come inside. "Since you've been arguing with your father?"

Calista scowled, hoping he would buy her anger as a cover for the myriad other, even less pleasant, feelings that had been taking up residence inside of her.

"As little as possible," she said, which was the truth, "Long enough for him to badger me about — about what happened, and for him to give the most absolutely _minimal_ attempt at an apology I've ever heard."

"Erm," Gerald frowned. "Perhaps — perhaps if you gave him a chance to try again, he might have a better one, by now?"

"Well, then, he can write it in a letter," she snarked, perhaps a bit more bitterly than she even meant to, once she realised that he _hadn't_ even bothered trying to write her. "I don't want to talk to him."

Gerald sighed beside her, and something in it struck her as disapproving; or perhaps she had projected that, given the tangle of heavy feelings in her chest, in her gut. Either way:

"Don't tell me that you're actually taking _his_ side, after he attacked you?"

"Of course I'm not happy with what happened," Gerald said quietly, "But really, it's between he and I — and please don't get me wrong, there are still _several_ words I'd like to have with him about it, at some point, but I must say, you're more cross with him than _I_ am. I'm beginning to regret having said anything to you at all—"

That, of course, was precisely the wrong thing to say.

"That's because you _have no idea what it's really like_ , having someone do whatever they please with your thoughts," she snarled softly back at him, "I _do_ , and I —"

"I know, Calista," Gerald interjected, in what she suspected was meant to be a very reasonable tone, "I know you're cross because you care about me, and I do appreciate that, but —"

"And _anyway_ ," she added, ignoring his interruption, "What the hell do you mean, you're beginning to regret telling me? You're just as bad as _him_ , if that's what you think — that the way to handle things that have gone wrong is just to keep them secret!"

She glanced at him then, and saw Gerald's eyebrows practically leap into his hairline.

"Calista," he said, quietly, as they approached the corner of her street, "Don't you think that statement is just _slightly_ hypocritical, considering your meetings with Sirius Black?"

The dark things in her gut seemed to sprout limbs, and for a moment, it felt like they were strangling her, wrapping fingers around her lungs, her heart; she felt her breathing, and her pulse quicken, and it was like a black hand had reached up from somewhere inside her, and was blocking her vision; Gerald must have noticed, because suddenly, her fingers were clasped in his, and a steadying arm was at her waist.

"Calista, _mon cœur_ , are you —"

"Yes," she admittedly wretchedly, interrupting him, interrupting the blackness that was making her insides hurt and her head light. "It is."

Gerald kept his hold on her, and the black fog began to clear, at least from in front of her eyes.

"Don't you realise," Calista managed, a bit breathlessly, as the darkness hadn't stopped pressing on her lungs, or her heart, "That's _why_ I want to stay so angry with him? It… it makes it a lot easier to live with what I've —" she swallowed. "What I've been doing."

" _Mon cœur,_ if you had told your father after you first met him, he'd already have forgiven you by now; doesn't it just make things worse, dragging them on like this?"

Calista chuckled hollowly.

"He's never going to forgive me," she muttered. "He _hates_ Sirius; more than you can even imagine."

"I know he does, Calista, but I'm certain that no matter how powerful his hate for _anyone_ is, his love for you is stronger; eventually, he'll come around, if you tell him the truth."

"He won't," Calista said, feeling a terrible, cold certainty in her veins, "And perhaps he shouldn't; I thought…"

The rain around them intensified suddenly, as the sky opened up above them. She saw Gerald frown, softly, and then he ushered her back a few steps, into a narrow yard between two rows of dilapidated housing. He murmured a charm, casting an invisible rain shield over their heads; she followed it up with the privacy spell her father had shown her, long ago, when he'd come into her room at Malfoy Manor to talk her through one of her nightmares.

"I thought he had changed, or maybe I just wanted to believe he wasn't so bad, because when I first started talking to him, when I asked him about _her_ — I realised that we had a lot in common. Not good things, but — I started to think that he was just as broken and — and _fucked_ inside as I am —"

"Calista, please, _mon colibri_ , you're not —"

" — and he didn't grow up so differently than I did. My mother…" she paused, and Gerald's hand on her back began to move, passing over her damp jacket with slow, careful circles; it was comforting, and she hated it, because she didn't feel particularly deserving of it, in that moment.

"My mother didn't become the way she was on her own," she murmured, "I suppose I knew that already, but… Sirius told me that… that his mother had a lot of the same ideas, and so did _her_ mother, and... And maybe she didn't come up with all of those things she did to me all on her own…"

Gerald shifted even closer, and the crease of worry deepened across his forehead.

"I have read," he said, hesitantly, "That it… it tends to run that way. Children who've only known abuse grow up to repeat it, and _their_ children repeat it and…"

He blinked, and Calista could see him struggle with some sort of emotion; his jaw tightened, and his throat moved, and suddenly, the hand at her back felt uncertain, wavered.

"I don't think it's always true," he whispered, into the eerie silence she'd created around them, "I think we've got to have a choice…"

"Of course we have a choice," Calista heard herself saying, and _then_ she heard herself admitting the most terrible thing of all; she could practically feel a shadowy fist wrapping itself around her spine as she spoke.

"That was the other reason I wanted to know him; he grew up _like that_ , with all of those influences and abusesand pureblood propaganda, and no matter what else he did — _he never took the Mark_."

Gerald moved his hand from her back to her shoulder, and then, tenderly, he cupped the side of her face, fingers almost unbearably warm against the chill of the grey day.

" _Mon colibri_ ," he said, just as his rain shield charm failed, and the water came pouring down over them both, "He's not the only one; your father doesn't have the Mark, and I know you would never take it, either."

She met his eyes, through the icy sheets of rain, or tried to; raindrops had splattered the front of his glasses, and she could hardly make his out.

 _Then I was never given a choice_ , she thought, bitterly; and it was as if Gerald could hear her thoughts, somehow. The rain stopped drenching her again, as Gerald renewed his charm, and his palm came to rest again, warm and steady even through her layers of clothing, at precisely the spot where her skin mirrored her mother's _and_ her father's, though he didn't know about the latter.

"You don't have the Dark Mark," he told her quietly, "You have battle scars, the same as I do; and dreaming about them doesn't mean there's anything wrong with us. It's something wrong with the people who gave them to us."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Severus looked up from his dark reverie by the half-hearted fire at the sound of a key in the front door; an instant later, the sound of the rain was amplified through the open door, and a half-drowned creature the size and shape of his daughter slipped into the room.

"Finally found the Giant Squid, have you?" Severus muttered, as he rose, wand poised with a Warming Spell.

Calista eyed him warily, fingers still wrapped around the doorknob; for a few seconds, the silence was broken only by the dull tapping of the rain outside, and the sharper, wetter drops from her hair to the wooden floor.

"Maybe I have," she finally said, "But as you can plainly see — I haven't drowned, after all."

He stepped closer, uncharacteristically wary, himself. "Seems as if you've come close enough," he remarked, and then — careful to move his wand slowly — " _Aercalida_."

A jet of warm air swirled around her, instantly drying the Muggle trousers and jacket she had on; her hair stopped dripping.

"I could have done that myself," she said, as he slipped his wand back into his pocket.

"I know."

Another uncomfortable silence stretched between them, and Severus willed the right words to free themselves from his throat.

"Calista —" he began, and:

"Dad —" she began at the same time; but he pressed on, because he wasn't certain how much longer he would keep her waiting, if he didn't do this now.

"I owe you and Gerald an apology, for attempting legilimency on him when it was not necessary," he said, words grating against his teeth like a mouthful of rocks, "Though I suppose that won't satisfy you, unless I give you my word that it will not happen again."

Calista frowned, and blinked; he saw a shadow shift in her gaze, but whatever she was thinking, she kept it expertly hidden.

"So," she said, at length, "Is that just an observation, or are you actually going to give me your word?"

"Do you want it?" _Is it still worth anything to you?_ After all, he already _had_ promised her, long ago, that he would not do precisely what he had done, and if he felt that she'd broken worse promises herself, that opinion wasn't getting them any closer to a reconciliation.

"Yes," Calista said, "I do; and if you can give it to me, if you can _mean_ it — then I think there's an apology I owe you, as well."

 _Finally_. He knew she hated being here alone, knew from Narcissa that she was staying at the manor, though perhaps 'haunting it' was a better descriptor given her disposition as of late, but he could not allow the Boot boy back here until she understood _why_ he'd banished him in the first place, and until he knew that she would not betray his trust, again, in giving out the charms to their home.

"Very well," Severus said, "I'm sorry, and I give you my word that I will not attempt to infiltrate Boot — Gerald's — mind again without permission, unless doing so will resolve an immediate danger to you."

Even as he managed to loose the rocky words from his mouth and pour them out, he found that they left a bitter, gritty feel behind that hardly felt any better; but then, he never hadbeen very good at apologies, and there had been precious few people in his life worth improving the skill for, so it was something of a pity that one of them was standing in front of him, right now, and he had no idea if he'd done well enough.

"I should have known there would be conditions," Calista said, twisting out a wry, sad sort of smile, "But I suppose I will have to accept them, since I don't think you'll give me the same promise without them."

"No, I won't," Severus admitted, "You know I promise nothing if you are in danger; and I stand by my decision to teach that boy Occlumency, if you will not; he is too close to you, I think, for us to neglect it for much longer."

"What if he doesn't want to learn now? After what you did, and after what _I_ did?"

Severus felt a vein in his jaw twitch; it was a consequence he had not yet considered. He glanced down at his forearm, knowing that if he peeled back his sleeve, the lines would be just a tiny bit clearer today than they had been yesterday; knowing that unless he could get to the bottom of whatever was happening at Hogwarts, they were running out of time.

"I suppose he does have that choice," he finally said, "But—"

His daughter's gaze was still wary, her face still set in stone, but now that he was studying her closely, there were shadows underneath her eyes he had not noticed in some time; though her hair had stopped dripping, a damp strand still clung to her cheek, and when she lifted her hand to brush it aside, something about her wrist, her fingers, small and pale and thin, struck him as mournfully fragile, though she would undoubtedly scoff at him for thinking so.

 _Dark things are coming_ , he meant to tell her, _I do not know if I can stop them in time_.

 _If he knows your secrets and cannot guard them_ , he should have told her, too, _Then neither of you will be safe for long._

"But we can discuss that another day," he said, instead, against every fibre of reason in his mind, because he suddenly ached to give her comfort once more, instead of more fear; after all, if he and Dumbledore could not stop the tide of things, then this might well be his last chance in a very long time to do so.

"I think I'll take the apology I'm owed now, too," he added, thinking to wrap up the one last thing that hung between them, before he wrapped _her_ up in his arms, eighteen years old and of a height with him, or no.

"I —" Calista sucked in a breath, and then nodded. "I suppose it's — well past time."

"Indeed." He suppressed a rather fond smirk; he didn't doubt that apologising was nearly as difficult for her as it was for him, but he had done it, and so she ought to manage, as well.

"I don't even know where to start," Calista said quietly, and for the first time since she had come home, her mask slipped; he saw her mouth tremble, her pulse leap into her throat. "I suppose… I suppose I ought to begin with the letter, and why I even read it."

 _Letter?_ Severus felt his mouth twist into a puzzled frown. She hadn't been foolish enough to write the countercharms to his locks in a _letter_ , had she?

"I…" Calista exhaled, and then, inexplicably:

"I don't know how far you're going to let me get into my explanation," she said, and her voice was just as small, just as fragile and thin as those now-trembling fingers, "So — so first, I want you to know that I really _am_ sorry for all of it, and most of all for not telling you sooner. I couldn't figure out how… I _still_ don't know how…"

Severus' throat clenched and hardened. "This isn't about the charms on the door, is it?"

"No, it isn't. I wish it was…"

"What is it, Calista?"

"I…" she swallowed, and he saw the resolve creep into her face, though it could not conceal the hollows beneath her eyes; he saw her take a deep breath, and draw herself up the extra inch or so that she needed, to match him.

"I got a letter, over the summer. I didn't read it right away, because I didn't _want_ to, but I didn't tell you about it, either, even though I had the chance. I read it a few days later, and again instead of telling you, I hid it, although I didn't know at the time that I needn't have bothered, it was en — you wouldn't have been able to read it, anyway."

"Calista…" Severus felt his heart thudding in his chest; who would send his daughter letters that he couldn't read, and that she would need to hide? Who would send her — because he'd caught her slip — letters that were encoded, or even worse, _enchanted_? " _Who_ sent you a letter? What was in it?"

He had a wild, desperate thought that he let himself cling to, for an instant; perhaps it was something Boot had sent, in his French, something that was inappropriate, or something rash he had done that she was covering for — but he could feel the gravity in her taut features, in her small and heavy voice, as surely as if it were pressing directly on his brain, and he knew, suddenly, that whatever this was, it was no mere Owlery trip; no forbidden potion in the back of her wardrobe.

"I didn't write back," Calista told him, hollowly, and his fingers itched with the urge to grab her around the shoulders, to force her to _get to the point_ — who had written her? — but he reminded himself, just in time, how that had gone last time, and he wrung his hands together, instead, since he could not quite bear their dead weight at his sides, in that moment.

"But I — I met him, completely unexpectedly, and I _had to know_ , no one else could tell me, no one else knew — I had to know if she could escape the same way he did, and so I _asked_ , and… and there were other things I wanted to know, about _her_ , and that's how it started; I think I expected some sort of closure, but —"

A blasting curse, from some phantom hand, must have been hitting him in the gut, before his mind even caught up to the subtext of what she was saying; and so, he was already in excruciating physical pain when she finally said his name.

"I should have known Sirius Black wasn't going to be able to give me that —"

 _No_ ; the word, the raw feeling of protest, tore its way through every nerve, every muscle, every sliver of bone in Severus' body; he supposed it must have ripped its way out of his mouth, too, because Calista flinched away from it as if it were an Unforgivable Curse.

"Dad, I'm sorry; I —"

" _Fuck you_."

Calista flinched again, and for the first time since he had ever looked into those eyes, mirrors of his own, he didn't care; he didn't pity her, he had no desire to reassure her.

"I thought — I thought we weren't supposed to talk to each other like that —"

It came out in a soft, self-deprecating, half-hearted sort of tone, and though he knew it at once for an attempt at an olive branch, the only thing he could think to do with it, in that moment, was to burn it.

"It seems that agreement doesn't apply, anymore," he heard himself say, and though he'd meant it to come out cold and calm, he heard his voice was rising into a roar without his consent, as he went on: "It seems that there are no agreements — _no rules_ — that apply to you, anymore!"

There was a crushing pain in his fingers that grew momentarily sharp enough to capture his attention, over the aching he felt everywhere else; he registered dimly that his twisting fingers were still twined, still clamping on themselves, and he did not trust himself to unwind them from each other; did not trust that if he did, they would not reach out and strike her…

 _No._ He twisted his fingers, tighter. He felt the sting of betrayal in his bones and behind his eyes; he felt his lip curl with it, with a mingled contempt for her stricken face and for his own pathetic reaction, and rage pulsed a _viciously_ painful staccato against his temple; but he would _not_ allow himself to raise his hands against his daughter in violence, no matter how much the rush of his temper demanded it.

"It's all done," she told him, and perhaps if his fury had not cast such a thick film over his mind, he would have noted that she'd drawn herself up again, that her shoulders and her jaw were set, resigned to the abuses he was hurling at her. "I'm — I'm _never_ going to talk to him again, I promise."

"No?" the roar of his voice battered into the books on their shelves, and it seemed that even their spines quaked; but Calista did not, and he could not quite tell if that made him more or less angry with her, " _Never_ , are you certain?"

"Yes."

"Certain you haven't had enough laughs with him, at my expense? _Frightfully_ amusing stories, he has, I'm sure — are you going to start calling me Snivellus, now, too?"

" _No!_ I would _never_ —"

"If it's another promise you're offering," he growled, "You might as well save it; I'm certain it will be of little value, coming from you."

At last, he seemed to have found the weak spot in her defences; she sucked in a short, sharp breath that brought her shoulders caving in with it.

"Fine," she said, and he hated the tremor in her voice even more than he'd hated the resolve in it, a moment ago, "You've made your point; you don't trust me, anymore."

"That's putting it rather mildly."

"Then — then punish me, if you have to," she said, quietly, "I'll accept whatever it is, for as long as it takes for you to change your mind."

"No, Calista," he said, and he bit off each word as carefully as if it were a soft cork; spat each syllable as bitterly over his tongue as if it were a mouthful of poison: "You're the one that told me, after all — _this isn't how it works, anymore._ "

He spun away from her then, and _only_ then did he unwind his fingers from each other, numb and aching and practically bloodless; perhaps that was why they fumbled, reaching for the little pot of Floo powder on the mantle, knocking it over.

"Are you — are you leaving?"

"The evidence would certainly seem to suggest so."

"I — Dad, wait."

Something in her voice needled him, and he snaked his head around, despite himself.

"I — I —"

" _What?_ "

Her mouth pressed into a line, and she shook her head, abruptly.

"Nothing," she said, and he fixed his eyes, briefly, at a point just above her head, so that he would not have to see the truth; would not have to acknowledge the peculiar pull of her mouth, the hollow look in her eyes, that he was not currently equipped to handle.

"Very well," he agreed, scraping a pinch of gritty powder off the rough surface of the mantle, even though there was bloody _nothing_ in the world that was, anymore.

Severus stepped into the fireplace; by the time he chanced a glance behind him, there was nothing but a roaring flame; and then, he landed, hard and cold and hurting, on the floor of his study, utterly alone.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

If it had been wretched and lonely, avoiding her father all autumn long, by her own will, then Calista had no words to describe the hellish, haunted sort of existence they settled into, all through the winter months.

Her father still came home, on the weekends, but he did not stay long, and he did not say much; even when his gaze searched her, it seemed detached and unfamiliar, as if he were merely reassuring himself that she was still breathing; and some days, the imagined fists that pressed on her lungs were so palpable that she did not quite know whether she was, until she saw his gaze slip silently away again, evidently satisfied.

 _I'm sorry_ ; she had said it dozens of times, in those first few days, through the fireplace and to his face, or more often, his back, when he was home; she said it perhaps even more often inside her head, where it burned and twisted and did no one any good, and eventually, that was the only place she _could_ bring herself to say it, because the feel of the words in her mouth began to leave a bitter ache that brought her dangerously close to tears.

She had thought, at first, that her father might forgive her, if she cried in front of him; she had thought the hard line of his nose, the grim curve of his mouth might soften, if she did, but she was not willing to test that theory; at first, she told herself that it would be unfair, to force him to forgive her because _she_ was hurt by the consequences of what she had done; and then, as time went on, she realised she was afraid that even that might not work.

As the weeks wore on, she felt less and less like crying; the world did not care that she was gripped, inside, by phantom fists; it did not care that the cold, stilted pleasantries and unreadable looks that passed between herself and her father were slowly turning her to stone, nor that her nights were increasingly plagued by nightmares, both old and new.

The world, as it turned out, only cared that she showed up to work, and did a reasonably competent job; and so she rose every morning and put up her walls and her mask, and did what was expected of her, and when the dreams kept her up at night, she started sleeping during the day, instead, whenever she could get away with it: the hour between finishing work and whatever dinner plans she'd agreed to, to keep her friends and family from looking too closely at her facade; early mornings between sunrise and the beginning of her shifts; nearly every Sunday, from dawn until dusk.

And then, on a grim, cold March day that also happened to be her nineteenth birthday, she realised that pain wasn't the only thing she'd stopped feeling.

Gerald had held a small birthday gathering for her in his new flat, when she'd insisted she didn't want anything else; she let him invite Amelia and Endria, because she hadn't seen either of them in weeks, and she knew it would have worried him if she refused.

The floors in the flat had been meticulously scrubbed since he'd moved in in January, the cupboards freshly painted, cheery yellow curtains hung at the windows. She'd helped him with most of it, all while pretending she didn't know the reason he'd picked that particular colour for the curtains, or why he'd left conspicuous gaps along the bookshelves in precisely the spots where some of her favourite volumes would have fit.

It would have been too exhausting, even for all her walls, if she'd had to keep the charade up all day and all night, so she stopped staying anywhere but home, at night; but she could get through an entire workday without being questioned, and so a few hours with her friends seemed manageable.

It had been, at first. She knew, when Amelia's eyes fell on her expectantly that it was time to unleash a joke or a gently snide remark; she knew when Endria's eyes sparkled with humour, that she was supposed to laugh, too; and she knew that Gerald would be the most difficult, but not _impossible_ to fool, and so when he'd asked her to invite her father, she'd lied smoothly, and told him she had, but that he was too busy marking essays to come.

She thought he'd believed her; but then, hours later, when Endria and Amelia had gone, he brought it up again.

They were kissing, on the edge of his old single bed, relocated from his room at his mother's home, when suddenly, Gerald stopped, taking her hands up in his, in the same moment he lifted his mouth from hers.

"You aren't really into this," he said quietly, "And your hands are cold. You didn't really invite your father today, did you?"

 _Of course not. What's the point?_ The words raced through her mind, but she numbly pressed a smirk to her face. "Erm — you know, considering _this_ , I'd really rather not talk about my father right now."

She attempted to lift her hands out of his, to use them to pull him closer, and distract both of them; but Gerald would not let them go, at least not easily.

"You're still arguing with him," he observed, "How long is this going to go on?"

 _That really isn't up to me, is it?_

"We're not arguing," she said, tiredly, "We just — he's busy, especially with the Tournament going on at Hogwarts, and _I'm_ still dealing with Astra ruining our entire stock of dittany."

 _There._ He frowned, successfully baited. "How in Merlin's name can you make healing potions without dittany?"

"If you figure it out," she said ruefully, "Please let me know."

She shifted closer to him then, and found his mouth with hers again; not because she particularly _wanted_ to, but because she wanted him to stop asking questions; and if his mouth, and his hands, and even his soft brown eyes all seemed terribly far away, missing the heat and taste and feel that used to come with all of this was worth dulling the _other_ things as well, wasn't it?

She was cold again, and it took her a few seconds to realise that Gerald had stopped kissing her, a second time.

"I miss you, _mon colibri_ ," he said, quietly and inexplicably; and there was something in his voice, something small and raw and sad, that sparked a flicker of something deep inside of _her_ ; but it was like the light of a single candle, trying to burn through a thick winter fog, small and ineffectual.

"I know I've been working a lot of overtime," she said cautiously, because that was one of the lies she'd been telling, lately, to cover for the daylight hours she spent chasing fits of light, unsatisfying sleep, "But I'm here _now_ , so…"

" _Je pense que tu sais que ce n'est pas ce que je veux dire_ , _mon cœur_." _I think you know that's not what I mean._

He released one of her hands as he spoke, and brushed his fingers lightly along her hairline, and then around the shell of her ear, and she felt another jarring flicker of that tiny candle, threatening to burn through the shadows that had taken up permanent residence inside her. Experimentally, she focused on it, focused on feeling its heat through the thick, chilly fog that reminded her of rattling breaths and cold, skeletal hands…

His touch was almost devastatingly light, and yet, she _felt_ it, for a moment, closer than she'd felt anything else in months.

" _Mon colibri, je t'aime._ Please tell me, if something's wrong…"

 _Je t'aime. I love you._ He had never ceased saying it to her, not even through the cold dark of her wretched winter; and she had echoed the words back, as reflexively as she mirrored Amelia's smiles, or her father's blank looks; but _now_...

Now the words were in her gut, her lungs, her mind, burning an uncomfortable hole through the fog.

"I — Gerald, I —"

 _Love you._ She did, didn't she? Merlin, she'd been _saying_ it, numbly, all along; why was it making her breath catch, this time?

She swallowed, hard, against a sudden, scratchy sensation. "I love you, too."

He smiled, sadly. "Then tell me," he urged softly, curling her fingers into his, locking his eyes onto hers, " _Dis-moi ce qui te fait pleurer dans la nuit_." _Tell me what makes you cry at night._

"What?"

"I said, tell me what —"

"I understood. It's just — I don't. I don't cry."

It was true, strictly speaking, these days; unless she counted the burning in her eyes, the half-lucid moments of fear, when she was foolish enough to let herself fall asleep in the dark; but she was _alone_ , utterly alone, when the dreams woke her into a twisting panic, and there was no way that he could _possibly_ know…

"Maybe it's mad, then," Gerald said, running his thumb lightly over her fingers; and _oh Merlin, I can't_ — his hands, his eyes, were penetrating the fog, and it felt like so much more than a lonely candle, now. "But sometimes _I_ wake up, and it's like I just know… it's like I can _hear_ you. A few times, I've actually reached over, thinking you were beside me."

 _Fuck._ It was more like a flame than she'd even realised, the cataclysm threatening to overtake her insides, and it _burned_ , in her heart and her eyes and her throat, trying to see through the darkness; trying to feel anything but the cold fog, and suddenly, a massive tide started in her mind and in her heart, roaring and crashing and _hurting_ , and she couldn't stand it; it seemed to hurt a hundred times sharper, a hundred times fiercer, than even the pain of her mind, so many months ago, snapping violently back in on itself.

"It's — I almost think I hear it, now—"

She could not do it; she could not stand it. She thrust herself back into the fog, let the gripping fingers and the icy, rattling breath pull her back where it was cold, and still, and lonely, but it did not _hurt_.

"Maybe you _are_ mad," she heard herself say, deceptively light, "I promise, there's nothing wrong, except for a a temporary lack of dittany."

He was searching her, still; but that was all right. She met his gaze willfully, mask firmly in place, knowing she was far too good of an Occlumens for him to _really_ read her. And then, when his eyes finally left her face, she leaned forward, and touched her lips to the hollow underneath his jaw.

"Now," she made herself say, in an entirely different tone, " _Tu mihi dare meus est natalis donum, aut non?_ " _Are you going to give me my birthday present, or not?_

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

The weather grew warmer, but Calista did not; her singular solace lay in the slowly lengthening daylight hours, which she depended on with increasing frequency for sleep; her nightmares chased her so incessantly, as June approached, that even falling asleep in the middle of the day with her skylights covered was dangerous.

It was a sweltering summer evening towards the end of June when Calista realised that her father would be home soon, for the summer, and it would be _twice_ as difficult, convincing him and convincing Gerald simultaneously that she was _fine,_ always _fine;_ and when it struck her that perhaps it was about _goddamned time_ for her father to realise that she was not in any way fine at all, the resulting flicker of fire in her gut made her resolve to go to sleep again, until the feeling passed.

The sky through her skylights was brilliantly blue, and even with all of them thrown open, it was hot enough to need to cast a Displacement Charm on the warm air that had been stifling, all day in her attic room while she'd been at work.

It took less than a minute for her to fall asleep, heavy and exhausted and bleak.

 _The same dream again; the familiar door, the unavoidable pattern of her feet over the stone, into the darkness; the same motions, the same spells, the same fear._

' _Lumos,' she says, and the visage of Moody still frightens her, somehow, even after all this time, after all this repetition._

' _Immobulus!' and then there is her uncertainty, as she is Disarmed, but not attacked again; the clatter of her wand on the floor, the flickering torch._

 _It is even darker, this time, when not-Moody's alien profile comes into focus. She takes a step forward, trying to get a closer look, in the last second she knows she has, before the dream inevitably ends —_

 _Except, this time, it_ doesn't _end, and she is no longer on her feet, but hunched over, cold and scared, in some space that feels at once uncomfortably tight and dangerously, cavernously large; her mother might find her at any time, if she is not careful, and quiet —_

 _Dread fills Calista's suddenly small body, as she realises where, and_ when _she is. Her hands are tiny, and when she thrusts one towards her pocket, there is no wand; there never was. There is only a tatty little journal, the broken stub of a quill she found on the floor._

 _The thick, ornate legs of a familiar dining table surround her, like the bars of a cage, but it is a cage she has chosen for herself, because Mother has company, and she does not like to see any of Mother's company any more than Mother likes them seeing_ her.

 _She freezes, as two sets of feet, one familiar and one not, sweep their way into the dining room._

" _What are you, all of sixteen?" her mother's voice dripped like ice on the floor, "As I've been told far too many times, the Dark Lord does not care for children, so why should I risk my favour with him, bringing him a raw, untested thing like you? One bit of filth, tortured and left alive, does not impress me."_

" _It's a fair question," the stranger says; the voice belongs to a man, and as his feet come closer to her hiding spot, Calista scrambles backwards, further out of sight; but her plan seems to backfire, as a sudden rustling of clothing and a shifting shadow soon place his face, pale and narrow,_ entirely _too close to her, just under the table's edge._

" _Oh," he says, and his brow lifts in mild surprise; his hand stretches towards her, and she backs away again, too quickly; she can't quite suppress a yelp of surprised pain, as her head smacks into the table leg. "Hello, little one. What's your name?"_

 _She does not answer him, but her mother does, from far too close._

" _Her name is Calista," her mother says, coldly, "And she's utterly useless — me, on the other hand, I can be of great help to you,_ if _you can prove that you're worth my time."_

" _Ah," the man says, and he smiles thinly at her, bracing his hands against the floor to support himself. "Hello, Calista Lestrange."_

 _A thundering roar rises around her, pressing on her ears, as the man stands and she dissolves momentarily into blackness, once more._

 _She's back outside her father's office, now, fully grown; but she does not need the flickering torch, now, to see who is getting up from the ground, in Moody's place. She only needs to hear the pitch of his voice, the crooning rhythm of the words, and she_ knows _who this man is, even if she has never known his name._

The ache in her ears did not fade, when she woke; instead, it echoed and rattled shrilly all around her; it took her several seconds to realise the ache was her own screaming, and that it echoed off her bedroom walls, now cloaked in darkness.

It took her several seconds longer to realise that, by her own design these last several months, she was all alone; no one was coming, to help her decipher what was real, and what was not.

She fell silent, and lit her wand; robotically, she swung it in the direction of the stack of books on dream interpretation that she'd permanently loaned from Gerald, _but_ …

 _In thirteen years, have you learned nothing, when it comes to the mind?_

She could practically _hear_ her father's disapproving voice in her head, and suddenly, her longing to hear it in her ears, as well, was utterly overpowering; she raced down the stairs, kneeling in front of the fireplace with a thudding heart, and she told herself it was only because she wanted to talk to him again, and not at all because she thought the dream — _the memory_ — might have actually been real.

She called, and called, and called, and he did not answer, and all of a sudden, it was another night, another long sojourn of unanswered cries, and she could feel her leaden feet and rickety heart leading her over the Hogwarts grounds, on a night lit with the silver of the full moon.

 _Dad?_ She had called, on that night, more times than she could count, aloud and in her mind; and he had not answered her, because _he could not_ …

She was not close enough; there was absolutely _no way_ that she was close enough to reach him from here, and yet… how could she forgive herself if she did not at least try?

 _Dad!_ She called, over and over again, from within her mind; she formed a passage through every single one of her barriers, sending the thread of thought out as if she were screaming at the top of her lungs, but of course it was no use, genetic bond, or not; without an anchor point in his mind, she could not possibly hope to reach Hogwarts from bloody _Cokeworth_.

The fireplace lit up suddenly, an incoming call, and she practically leapt into it into her haste to answer it.

"Dad!"

" _Mon colibri_ —"

It was Gerald.

" — Are you all right?" he asked, and even in through the wavering flames, she could see that his face was pinched with worry, "I — I know you think it's mad, but I could have sworn I heard —"

"Stop," she finally managed to tell him, the heat from the fireplace, combined with the stifling air was making her too dizzy and frantic to affect any sort of calm, "I _need to talk to my dad now_ , but he's not answering his fireplace — I need you to put me out, so I can keep trying!"

"What's wrong?" he asked urgently, and she started to push the ashes along the edge of the fireplace towards the fire, desperate to put it out; he blinked, and then:

"Calista, wait! He's not going to answer you, don't you remember? It's the twenty-fourth of June."

Her fingers kept sweeping at the ashes; the fire sparked and waned, but Gerald managed one more thought, before she put him out:

"It's the date of the third task."

 _The third task._ The details that had filtered her way through the chill fog she'd been living in for several months seemed to be dredged deep inside of it, but hadn't Uncle Lucius told her that the third task would run from dusk until the end of the night?

Logic would have had her putting this all to rest until the morning; but logic was a poor companion to the heavy shadows under her eyes, the slick sweat on her skin;

— _the cage of the table around her, a man, crouching down, —_

Hurriedly, she stuffed her feet into the shoes she'd discarded when she'd come home from work, and she had the distinct feeling that she had somehow gone back in time.

Here she was again, looming over a puzzle she had only the faintest grasp of, contemplating a danger that she was not at all equipped to face; only this time, instead of an enchanted map, she had only the scraps of a dream that was already beginning to fade back into the shadows of her subconscious; and _if_ by chance, it had been more than just a dream, she could be running into something far worse than the jaws of a wolf, or even the clammy hands of the dementors.

She could be running into someone that knew her mother; someone that had smiled serenely in her kitchen, and had _said Calista's name_ , and who might have had precisely the same dream that had woken her, floating about in his mind, when they'd met again —

 _No_ , she told herself, _It can't have been real. I need to stop this and go back to bed._

She hadn't even finished the thought when she landed on the cold floor of her father's study at Hogwarts.

Just as Gerald had predicted, it was still, and empty. But she ought to be almost close enough, now…

 _Dad!_ Calista called out, even as she began tearing through the halls.


	14. He's Back

**IMPORTANT: THIS CHAPTER WAS A DOUBLE UPDATE. DON'T MISS CHAPTER 13.**

 **14: He's Back**

The castle was utterly empty; another detail filtered up through the shredding fog inside of her, and she recalled that her uncle had told her all of the tasks were to be held outside, on the grounds, and so that was where she went.

Finally, as her feet carried her through the dark, over the grass — _Merlin, it was the same night, it felt like the same night —_ she felt her father's response, inside her head, laden with disbelief:

 _Calista?_

 _Where are you?_ She asked him, urgently, _I need to talk to you, now._

He didn't reply in words, per se; instead, she saw the flash of an image, briefly, across the surface of her mind where she had opened it her outermost barrier, to allow him to respond. It looked like a massive structure — no, a _hedge_ of all things — but she recognised the stands of the Quidditch pitch at its edges.

 _I'm coming_ , she said, and she started to run.

 _No_ , his words were sharp, suddenly, in her mind. _Go back inside the castle. I will come to you._

 _But I'm almost —_

" _Stupefy!_ "

Calista was hurled so suddenly and forcefully to her back that it took her a moment to realise she was no longer running, that the expanse of rotating darkness ahead of her was the sky; and nearly as soon as she'd realised it, it began to fade away.

 _No!_ She felt the piercing alarm of terror in her head, and she could not tell if she had broadcast it to her father, or if she'd even, perhaps, screamed aloud… but no, that was not possible, her body would not move.

She clung to the wavering vision of the sky above her, even to the shrill note of her own panic, the rapid, thready beating of her heart, and but it was not enough; she could feel her lids slipping closed, as unconsciousness slipped heavy, reaching hands over her.

The hands still gripped her, roughly around the arm, when her eyes blearily opened again; but she must still be out of it, because she could _see_ the hands now, gnarled fingers and dirty fingernails, and —

"Hello again, lass," Mad-Eye Moody smirked at her, from behind the tip of his wand; the shadow of one of his eyes was locked on her face, while the other, magical one zoomed and whizzed in every direction around them. Her vision was still slipping in and out of focus, and her body felt like lead; she commanded her fingers to reach for her pocket, to search for her wand, but she could not even tell whether or not they were moving.

Moody chuckled. "Reckon you're wondering where your wand's got off to, eh? It's in my pocket, but you won't be reaching it in the state you're in."

Voices, or a voice — she could not tell if there were more than one or if she only imagined there were — boomed and rolled in the distance, coming in and out of focus.

"Useless," Moody grunted, almost off-hand, "And yet, there's still something happening in that skull of yours, isn't there, even after being hit with a Stunning Spell?"

She strained desperately against the fingers that had an iron grip on her arm, but the world was tilting around her; the voices in the distance became less and less distinct, and she felt her neck rolling back, helplessly.

"My father saw me as dirt, just like your mother did." The words floated over her, dimly. "But you and I — we have something inside that's far greater than they can hope to see, don't we? And that's why I'm going to help you, and I'm going to give you your wand back."

" _Ennervate_."

It was like a bolt of lightning lit up her brain, for an instant, and then the world swam back into focus; the booming announcements returned, and somewhere beyond Moody's terrifying face and his viselike grip on her arm, she registered the tall hedge distantly behind him; she was not certain if they were close enough to the surrounding stands for her to heard if she screamed, but —

 _Dad! Help —_

" _Imperio!"_

A crawling, horrid feeling latched itself onto the outside of her mind, and began worming its way inward, and she could no longer invest any energy in calling out, with her voice or with her mind.

It was good that they had practised so many times, because she could feel the curse spreading rapidly, coating and numbing her thoughts, snatching up each strand of her mind, and turning it against her; but they _had_ practised, and even as the memory of her mother's cold eyes and hard-knuckled fingers swam up behind her, she remembered what to do.

She withdrew utterly behind her second and third barriers, fortifying them both with every spare scrap of energy she could muster, and she made herself listen to the cloying, horrifying echo chamber that the curse had claimed for itself, in the outermost layer of her mind.

 _Ask nicely, if you want your wand back_ , the part of her mind that was no longer her own whispered, and even though she wanted to run screaming in the other direction, she remembered what her father had told her, during those uncomfortable lessons.

 _Don't try to take the first layer of your mind back, or your resistance will show in your eyes._

It followed, then, that if she were to fool Moody into believing the curse had overtaken her, then she had to obey, at least at first.

"May I please have my wand back, sir?" She might have choked on the words, so bitter did they taste, had she not spent the last six months pretending to be fine, but as it was, they came out so perfectly demure that anyone who knew her surely would have thought they could not be her own.

"Yes, Calista, you may; but since I have helped you, as promised, now I'm going to ask you to help _me_."

He reached into his pocket, and produced her wand; he held it, devastatingly close, but she had not been commanded to take it, yet; her fingers twitched, aching for it, aching to banish the toxic influence coating a sizeable portion of her consciousness.

 _Enter the maze,_ the insidious voice in her mind commanded, just as the smooth, familiar pine of her wand hit her fingers, but Moody's grip was still iron-strong around her other arm. _Kill whoever you find inside, except for Potter._

Her fingers slid carefully down her wand, adjusting her grip; she would have only one chance, one instant before he realised she was aiming at _him_ , and so it had to be a spell that would incapacitate him until her father found them.

"Potter's got to make it to his engagement alive tonight," Moody muttered, wand still pointed at her face, "Very important; don't forget that."

 _Go,_ the treacherous voice snaked at her, and atlast, Moody's fingers released her. She could feel the ache of blood rushing back into the fingers of her left hand, as he let her go.

 _Enter the maze. Kill whoever you find, except —_

" _Sectumsempra!"_

" _Protego!"_

She barely registered the flick of Moody's wand, inches from her eyes, before her body was racked, utterly and suddenly, with searing pain; the black wall of the night sky rose up in front of her again, and she imagined she could see the echo of her scream, spiraling upwards into it.

"I told you you had to commit, didn't I, Lestrange?"

And _then_ —

A shape hovered above her again, this time blocking out almost the entire sky around it; and a soft, haunting melody began to penetrate the haze of her agony.

" _Vulnera Sanentur."_

 _Dad?_

" _Vulnera Sanentur_. _"_

On and on the song, the countercurse went, and gradually, the heat of the pain seemed to dull, or perhaps she was simply growing used to it; a blur of motion caught her eye, and she saw a familiar wand gripped in a white-knuckled hand, moving across her body; and then, she felt the soft, heavy warmth of another hand at her cheek, and rolled her eyes upward again.

"Dad," she muttered, but _was it_? His face, looming over her, was an ashen, wasted mask of grief and horror; his mouth trembled, even as the countercurse's melody poured seamlessly out of it.

" _Vulnera Sanentur_ ," he crooned, again and again, until all of her wounds must have surely knit; until the once-searing pain had become a dull, deep ache, and her body began to shiver, violently, against a sudden chill; and then, as if he meant to cure that, as well, her father lifted her into his arms, hands trembling against her shoulders.

"Cal — sta," a broken gasp slid by her ear, and one of those white, trembling hands touched her face again, before pressing it to his shoulder, and for a moment, she could not distinguish her own shivers from her father's choked, wrenching sobs.

"I'm —" _fine_ , she wanted to say, but suddenly the word was no longer in her vocabulary. " — sorry," she heard herself say, instead, and she thought she might have meant for the raw terror in his face, but he hooked the fingers of one hand under her chin, and brought her eyes up to his, and — _oh, how could she ever have thought that he wouldn't forgive her?_

"I love you, Calista," he said, voice raw; and there was something shiny on his face, in his eyes, that seemed impossible — she had _never_ , not once, seen her father cry, " _My strong, clever daughter_."

A memory tore through her mind, lighting it up, like an explosion; the same exact words, whispered in her mind, almost a decade ago; the words that had given her the strength to hold her mother off just a tiny bit longer, until he could rescue her, and _oh_ , the burning of it, of _feeling_ consumed her, then; it roared through her, a Patronus driving away the horde of dementors that she'd invited inside, but —

It only burned for a moment; and then, her vision blurred, and six months' worth of hurt and lies and loneliness was pouring down her face and stopping up her throat, but her lungs and her heart were free, suddenly, of the fists and the weight, and she sucked in a massive mouthful of air, just to prove it to herself; and _then_ —

"Dad," she choked, "Moody — he's —"

"Severus?"

Father and daughter started, simultaneously, and she was hauled to her feet as Severus rose himself; for a moment, her head swam and her legs threatened to buckle, and it felt almost as if she'd been hit with another Stunning Spell, but Severus seemed to expect it; or at least, he did not seem as if he were in any hurry to let go of her, or to let her stand on her own.

"Albus —" was all that Severus managed, before the Headmaster's keen gaze surveyed the situation; his eyes swept, in a fraction of an instant, from Severus' face to Calista's, to the sticky, dark stains in the grass and all over Calista's nightdress, and then —

" _Who?_ "

"Moody," Calista heard herself say weakly, as another violent shiver ran through her limbs; the motion made the world spin again, and nausea crept into her stomach.

"We must stop the tournament immediately," Dumbledore said, as grimly as Calista had ever heard him say anything, and her father's grip on her shoulders tightened, again, in response.

"You — you do whatever you want," he practically spat, " _I'm_ taking my daughter to the hospital wing, and I am not leaving her side until —"

"No," Calista managed, an enormous effort; everything that had driven her here, that had happened here, was tumbling around in her head even as her surroundings seemed to do the same outside of her; and whether it was from blood loss, or the aftereffects of the Imperius curse, she did not know, but it seemed impossible to piece any of it together coherently. Still; she had to try.

"Moody — isn't Moody," she gasped, "And he — he wants to kill Potter — no, that's not right, he wants to kill everyone _but_ Potter…"

Albus advanced, then, face stark white as it swam into her field of vision. " _Where did he go?_ "

"I don't —" Calista started to say, but Severus stepped neatly forward, somehow managing to keep his supportive hold on her and block her from the Headmaster's view at the same time.

"He got away," Severus said grimly, "When I was performing the countercurse. I do not know where he went."

"He isn't Moody," Calista said again; even in her exhausted, terrorised, and utterly disoriented state of mind, this seemed critical to communicate. "He's — a Death Eater, or at least someone who wanted to be one — and I think —" she shook her head, trying to clear it, but that was a mistake; the edges of her vision darkened threateningly.

"The maze," she wheezed, remembering what the curse had told her to do; another shiver sent her clutching onto her father's robes to keep herself upright, "Is that what the hedges are?"

"Yes," the Headmaster said, and Calista told them, "Then that's where he went."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Time, and people, and words, and most of all, her thoughts; all of it blurred, as Calista was dragged around the grounds, leaning heavily on her father.

She dimly recalled being led into a small, white tent, the thick, coppery feel of a blood-replenishing potion on her tongue; and she recalled her father arguing with Dumbledore, through the tent's flap, about it. Dumbledore wanted someone, one of the medics, to bring her back to the castle, and Severus was utterly refusing to let her go.

Her father seemed to have won, but even after he'd cleaned the medical tent out of its meagre supply of the potion, she felt only marginally better; her head had stopped swimming quite so violently, but her legs were still unreliable, and she could not stop _shivering_.

She heard Dumbledore arguing with a small crowd; several foreign accents reached her ears, and she picked up on a string of outraged French, thanks to all of Gerald's lessons:

" _C'est inacceptable! C'est tricher! Nos champions ont été trompées!" Our champions have been deceived!_

"Madam!" Dumbledore roared over the cacophony of voices, in a voice that triggered another Calista's shivers, "There is more at stake than the tournament!"

She recalled seeing the hedges come down; she thought her father had been part of it, though it had come during another wave of unsteadiness that made it hard to remember.

"We found three of them," she remembered Professor McGonagall saying grimly, "Miss Delacour was Stunned. Krum seems to have done something to Diggory; he's bleeding, but he's conscious, and Poppy says he'll be all right, once we get him to the hospital wing."

" _Where is Harry?_ "

"Gone," McGonagall had said, ashen-faced and tight-lipped. "And Moody with him."

Dumbledore had spun on _her_ , then, on Calista.

"I know you are not feeling well," he said, with a terrible urgency to his words, "But it is of utmost importance that you tell us everything you know, about the man disguising himself as Alastor Moody."

 _Do I know anything, really?_ She wondered frantically, as a firm hand on her shoulder steered her forward, Dumbledore at her other side. The next thing she knew, she was seated; she was back in the little white tent.

"Who is he?"

"I don't know." It was marginally easier, at least, to think, when she didn't have to concentrate on trying to keep her feet. "I — I never heard his name."

He and her father both peppered her with questions simultaneously, fast and urgent enough to make her head spin; how had she known he was not really Moody? Where did she know him from? What had he said, about Harry Potter?

The events of the night and the scraps of her dreams still tumbled about in her mind, not quite aligning; there was still a tinge of something foreign in between her first barrier and her second, and she realised that that was where the memory of the dream _was_ ; that was why she could not fully recall, but she did not need their two sets of eyes on her, boring into her, to know that _she must recall it._

She remembered reaching out, clutching the collar of her father's robes, bringing his dark eyes close enough to reflect hers.

" _Read me_ ," she whispered, earnestly, "I'll try to show you everything I can."

Severus glanced behind him, but there were only the three of them in the tent; and then he bent low again, wand drawn, and:

" _Legilimens."_

She lowered her first barrier, revealing the jumble of sticky-coated thoughts; echoes of the curse that had briefly claimed this part of her mind still clung here and there, but if he recognised it, he did not immediately say so.

 _It's here, somewhere_ , she told him, _It's just — it's in pieces, and I can't find them all…_

 _Like calls to like_ , he reminded her, and she snatched at the first scrap of it she could remember — the duel, that memory was clear. She examined it until something in it sparked, lit up another piece of her mind.

" _The funny thing, Calista_ ," _Moody said, sending a shiver down her spine for reasons she had not quite been able to understand, "Is that the name you've chosen instead doesn't have much more honour…"_

The flickering, dimming torch; the dream she'd been having all along… but no, there was more to it than that, wasn't there?

Another scrap of memory lit up, and as she reached to examine it, she felt the particular chill of dread, of horror, that told her it was most definitely one of the ones from _before_. She forced herself to look at it, brought it to her father's attention.

 _The narrow face, smiling at her under the table; the yelp of pain as she cracked her head; and then, precisely the same voice, from almost her whole lifetime ago…_

" _Hello, Calista."_

"Crouch," she heard her father say, hollowly, as the tendrils of his mind withdrew abruptly from hers, "I cannot — it does not seem possible, but — the man she saw, the one she believes is Moody: it's Bartemius Crouch."

"What?" Calista stammered, wondering if she had misheard, or even hallucinated his words; or had the memory somehow been damaged? "No it isn't — I've seen him before, at — at the Ministry, it can't have been —"

"Not him," Severus said grimly, seemingly for Dumbledore's benefit as much as hers, "His son."

 _His — his_ son?

A very familiar newspaper headline flashed across her mind; her mother's horrifying visage glittered at her, in black and white — and she had read that article, _hundreds_ of times, in the early days, when she had struggled to believe that her mother really was locked away, really could not get to her; and she had seen two other names, besides her mother's, charged with torturing Frank and Alice Longbottom. Rabastan Lestrange, and… _Bartemius Crouch, Jr._

Which meant — which meant that if the memory _was_ real…

"No," Calista whispered, "No, he's — he was arrested with _her_ — he can't be —"

Dumbledore spared her only the merest of glances, now that she had given them what they needed.

"Severs, have Poppy take her up to the hospital wing with Mr. Diggory," the Headmaster said, and that terrible voice was back, "We must —"

"Aurrrgh!" A growl rose from her father's throat, and then it twisted into a pained hiss.

"Severus, we must —"

"It's too late," Severus said; fingers scrabbling for the end of his sleeve; and then it seemed to Calista that the world stopped utterly, for just a moment; she saw stark, heavy black lines against the pallor of her father's forearm; _but if the lines were black, that meant —_

"He's calling us," Severus said bleakly, "He's back."

"Severus," Dumbledore said, quietly, "You know that I must ask —"

"Calista is still not well," her father said, and his fingers gripped into her shoulder once more, as his face went white. "She needs more of the potion, she needs dittany —"

"She will receive both of those things in the hospital wing. Severus, it is imperative that we locate Harry immediately—"

" _I — don't — give — a — damn — about — Potter!_ " her father howled, sounding almost mad, "Send Karkaroff — despite his denial, he'll have felt it, too, and he doesn't want this any more than I do."

"Please, Severus. You have my word that I will ensure Calista's safety until you return with Harry."

"How am I supposed to do that? Snatch Potter from under the Dark Lord's nose, and come _back_ —? You think he will let either one of us walk away alive?"

Calista would only remember the precise words of the argument she overheard later, when she sorted through the jumble of memories in her mind; then, in that moment, she could only dimly register three things:

 _The lines are black._

 _Crouch escaped Azkaban._

 _There is nothing stopping her, now._

And _then_ , she was hauled to her feet again, and the world swam again, and she realised one more thing:

 _He is asking my father to go to the Dark Lord._

She reached blindly into the darkness that was clouding and tilting her vision, and clutched at her father's robes, thinking only that she would not let him go; or at least, that she would not let him go alone.

There was motion at the edge of her dimming field of vision, then, and Professor McGonagall's face swam grimly into view, the merest flash of a second —

"Albus, he's back! Potter is back, he's alive!"

She had only flashes of awareness, after that point, and some of it made her question whether any of it was real; Harry Potter, bloodied and horror-stricken, gripping what looked like a massive trophy, and he'd said the words, too:

 _He's back. Voldemort's back._

And, at some point, the distant, fuzzy echo of her father's voice, fading in and out:

… _need to take care of her… too much blood… told you one vial would not suffice…_

Again, a roaring silence filled her ears; again the world spun away into blackness; and while there were undeniably horrors all around her, and dark days ahead, she was not quite so afraid, this time, as her awareness faded, because it faded with the knowledge that her father had forgiven her; that he was not letting her go.

* * *

 _ **(A/N:** This is the end of Part 1. I intended this shorter chapter to be a bridge between the two parts. Also, welcome to the AU. ;) )_


	15. PART TWO Promises

**PART TWO**

 **1\. Promises**

Calista woke in a familiar dark to a familiar voice, nursing a familiar pain.

"Calista," her father said, and even at such a low pitch, she could hear the wary edge in his tone. She sat up, and familiar stone walls materialised around her, illuminated by the tiny, silver-blue glow of a witchfire nightlight.

"I'm — was I dreaming again?" she murmured, puzzled; she could not _remember_ dreaming, and yet, along with the familiar scenery, she could feel the sharp ache of a remembered pain seeping into her skin.

She started to sit up, and the ache shot across her body in several directions, like lightning bolts; whatever dream she'd had, this time, the heat of the knife had not been limited to her back —

"No, Calista," her father's face swam into view from the shadows to the right of her bed, white and tight-lipped and grim. "It wasn't a dream." he said, but she didn't even need him to say that for all of it to come swirling back to her.

 _Moody's fingers, like a vise on her arm; the slick, nauseating creep of the Imperius Curse, claiming the first layer of her mind for its own; pain and blood, and darkness; stark black lines on her father's arm, a terrible truth she understands written between them; Harry Potter, face hollow and arm caked in blood: He's back. Voldemort's back._

"I — no, please tell me it isn't true," she said, frantically trying to unwrap herself from blankets that did not seem inclined to cooperate, "He can't really have come back. It's… Potter was lying, the marks were — I was delirious, I imagined them —"

Severus' hand settled heavily on her shoulder. "Now would be a terrible time to start lying to you; I have only a few minutes before I must go, and it is imperative that you listen to me, that you do exactly as I say."

"Go where?" She could feel dread coiling in her heart, before he even answered, because she _knew_ ; she had heard it herself, if her swooning, dizzied memories were to be believed.

"You know where I must go," he said, grimly, "And you have a part to play in ensuring I return safely."

"No!" Calista renewed her struggle against the blankets, against him, against the truth. "You can't go to him, he'll —"

"Listen to me," her father commanded, and it was as if he were leaning over her again, face white and voice breaking; something in his tone silenced her at once. She thought the sky might have been wheeling overhead, still, for all the sense of reality she felt.

"I will return," her father said, quietly, eyes fixed on her face, "I cannot tell you, yet, precisely how long I will be gone. It might be hours; more likely, it will be days. There are several things I need you to promise me, and Calista — I need you to understand, that I have never extracted a promise from you that was as important to keep as this; but if you can promise me that you will do exactly as I say, I promise you that I _will_ return safely. As long as you keep your word, I will be able to keep mine."

Calista felt the world spinning, again; this could not be happening, none of this could be happening… but the weight of her father's gaze, of her father's trust, settled into her heart, telling her with no uncertainty that it _was_.

She swallowed her protests. "Tell me what I need to do," she said, quietly, instead.

"I need you to stay here, at Hogwarts," her father began, and Calista felt a scowl begin to twist her mouth, as she braced herself for a lecture about staying put, and behaving, and ensuring her own safety above anything else… and _then_ :

"Circumstances may arise that require a message to be passed on to the Headmaster very quickly. Our ability to connect through legilimency has always been particularly strong; I believe that with the use of an anchor point, it may be possible for me to reach as far as Hogwarts, as long as my target is _you —_ and as long as you are willing to allow me to place one."

 _What?_ "Of course," Calista said quickly, stumbling over the shock of being asked to do something useful; why was he even asking? Of course she would do it.

Her father's frown deepened. "This will not be easy, Calista. The presence of an anchor point will significantly reduce my ability to shield you from my stronger emotions. You will feel my fear. like an alarm in your mind." His eyes bore grimly into hers. "You may even sense pain. I cannot keep this from you, and still maintain the external barriers I need to, against everyone else; but you _must not_ act on anything you feel from me, other than to relay information to Dumbledore. Do you understand all of this?"

Calista nodded, grimly, despite the tight feeling of apprehension in her throat; what other choice did she have?

"Promise me," Severus commanded, "Promise that no matter what you sense, no matter what I tell you — even if you think you hear me call for help — that you _will not leave the castle grounds_."

"I — I promise," she whispered, heart hammering, "But you have to — you promised you would return safely, if I agreed…"

"And so I shall," her father said, "As long as you are true to your word. Now, are you ready?"

She nodded, tightly, as Severus withdrew his wand.

" _Legilimens._ "

She did not tell him which memory she had chosen, to tune their minds to each other; and yet, she could feel the same one resonating within the fibres of his mind that brushed against her outermost mental wall; perhaps it was on both of their minds, already.

Just as she had in the memory, Calista reached her own consciousness forward, and guided her father through the wall before him. As the threads of his own memory wove themselves through the fabric of her version of it, she saw a glimpse of what her mind had been like, in his eyes, so many years ago.

It was a wispy web of broken and thinning threads, a feeble defense against the certain madness frothing below; in the distance, a terrible, ominous barrier glittered.

 _I love you, Calista,_ he had told her, silently, _My strong, clever daughter_ , and it had made her stronger; over time, many such words had made her strong enough to create barriers of her own, solid and great, that rivalled even the one that had once kept her prisoner in her own mind. If there was a chasm, still, of madness, then it was impossibly far away, held at bay by everything she had become in the meantime.

"Tell no one where I have gone," her father said, quietly, once the connection was anchored. "To everyone but Dumbledore, you do not know. In fact, it is safer for both of us if you seem to know nothing at all, except for what everyone will have heard already — that the Tournament has been cancelled; Moody was an imposter; we do not yet know what he has done with the real man; you have heard rumours, only, about the Dark Lord's return, but who knows if Potter is telling the truth?"

 _Moody._ A sudden spark of memory lit her up; there was something important about him, wasn't there? About what had happened… she felt a sick, heavy dread settle in her gut.

"Moody — the false one — _Crouch_ —" the name twisted its way out of her mouth, "He knows I can resist the Imperius Curse. He had me under it, when I cursed — well, when I _tried_ to curse him."

Severus swore, quietly; she saw the lines of his mouth go thinner, the shadows around it grow deeper. And then:

"There is little we can do about that, now, except hope that he has not found it interesting enough to report to his master; ironically, it may turn out to be fortunate, in this regard alone, that you lost the duel to him. It may serve to make you seem less appealing, in the immediate future, as a potential recruit."

Calista succumbed to a shiver; she did not think, this time, that it was related to her earlier blood loss.

"Less… less appealing in the _immediate_ future? What happens after that?"

"At this point, the immediate future is all we can afford to consider," her father said, ominously; and then, abruptly, he stood.

"I have brought your old school trunk here; since that is where I found your journal, I assume that is where you are now hiding things of a personal nature; and since I doubt you want to spend the next several days in a bloodied nightdress, I brought whatever clothes were in it, as well. The fireplace in my office no longer connects anywhere outside of the castle, so you will need to ask the Headmaster if you must make any outside calls. As long as your request is reasonable, he will allow it."

Calista felt panic grip her throat, as she read between the lines of his speech. "You think the Dark Lord will send someone to search our house."

"It is not outside of the realm of possibility," Severus acknowledged, "Especially since I did not come when he first called."

He did not need to tell her that the Dark Lord would be displeased; she felt her insides begin to burn with the need to stop him, to protest, to beg him not to go; but she might as well beg him not to breathe, because she knew as well as he did that desertion would never be forgiven; she knew in every terrible detail what would happen if he did not answer the summons at all. Besides, she had already given her word, and…

 _And I have to trust that he will keep his_.

Their joined memory flickered again, as if seeking her attention.

 _She's floating among the wreckage of her own mind; his fingers pass through the image of her, the representation of what's left of her core._

' _I'm going to come back,' he promises, before he gives her the words that will allow her to hold on, until then._

Her own memory played back, in answer. It had been cold, and lonely, and frightening, waiting; she had played the words back so many times they hardly sounded real, anymore; but still, she had gone on repeating them, using them as a shield against the rot of her mother's will. It had not been easy, in those dark hours, to believe him; but still, in the end — just when she had almost given up hope — he had come back.

"You shall have the freedom of the castle, for the most part, until I return," Severus said, deceptively matter-of-factly, "You will be in touch with the Headmaster, of course, and you may use the library, or visit your old common room. I'm certain there are many here who will be pleased to see you. You've already been given enough blood-replenishing potion, though it will take hours yet for you to feel completely recovered."

There was a small scraping sound, as he slid a glass jar across the tiny night stand in her direction; she caught the glitter of the night light across the smooth surface.

"Essence of dittany. You should apply it every few hours until the scars fade; this likely will not be enough, so once you are on your feet again, you will need more," his eyes shifted. "You can help yourself to the hospital wing's stores, or you can use my workroom to make some. Ah — and as to the matter of pests — your wretched cat is in my kitchen, and Boot has been told where you are, largely to prevent him from showing up at our house at an _inconvenient_ time."

A jolt of panic rose in her throat. She had not even thought of that; in fact, since putting his call out and tumbling through her father's fireplace, she had not thought of Gerald at all.

"The Headmaster is willing to admit him to the castle to see you, if you wish," her father said, "But you must stay guarded about what you are doing here, even from him. If you cannot, we will have no choice but to modify his memory."

He stepped back, and Calista saw him lifting his travelling cloak from the chair he had evidently brought in from the kitchen; it was not the chair she remembered, and _that_ of all things made her heart rate ratchet higher.

"This shouldn't be allowed — former students aren't allowed back," Calista stammered, because she desperately needed something, _anything_ , to feel normal, mundane, "I shouldn't be allowed back in the common room."

"No, I suppose not," Severus agreed, buttoning his cloak. "But I requested it, and the Headmaster had to agree." She saw his fingers slip, twice and then three times, on the same button. "You see — it turns out that at this particular time, I have an inordinate amount of… _leverage_. Perhaps I should have requested a raise, as well."

He smirked, thinly and humourlessly, and finally managed to thread the last button of his cloak.

 _No! Don't go!_ The panic in Calista rapidly crescendoed, and she had to bite her tongue, hard enough to taste copper, to keep from screaming for him not to leave.

Perhaps he sensed her anguish; perhaps he shared it. He came to her bedside again, and — as if she were small again — pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes; but perhaps it was not a nostalgic gesture, as she had supposed, because he locked his eyes on hers again.

 _No matter what happens_ , her father said, in the quiet corner of her mind where he had anchored himself, _Do not forget what you have promised._

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

It was eerily quiet when Severus' feet touched down on the spot he had been summoned to. It was a thick, heavy, unnatural silence, one that set his teeth on edge and he knew, instantly, that no matter how silent it was, he was not alone; he was not unobserved.

Jagged tombstones loomed all around him, some perched so precariously over crooked hills that it looked almost as if the occupants of those resting places had decided to rise; his heartbeat quickened, his fingers tightened around his wand, as he acknowledged the distinct possibility that it was true.

His eyes darted left, and right, taking in more of the macabre scenery; thankfully, he saw no sign of an Inferi army. Instead, he saw the hulking shape of an old, crumbling house, and then a bolt of cold fear struck straight to his heart, as his forearm tingled, growing uncomfortably warm.

There was no mistaking the sensation, or the silent, wordless command.

The Dark Lord knew he was here, and the Dark Lord was calling him forward to present himself.

He walked towards the crumbling manor house, as slowly as he dared, fortifying his mental walls as he went, concentrating on slowing his hammering heart, evening his sharp breaths. It would not do at all for the Dark Lord to see his distress; it would make a harder sell, for what he had to do, what he had to be.

The door swung open as he approached it; a crouching, pudgy, nervous-looking man with thinning hair and small, watery eyes sneered at him.

"Sh— shouldn't even let you in," the man wheezed, gripping the edge of the door with an unearthly, silvery hand; Severus let out a small, derisive hiss and stepped forward, leaving the other man no choice but to yield, to step aside.

If it had not been for the hand, and Potter's tale, Severus wasn't certain he even would have recognised the man that now leered nervously beside him. The years had done a number on him, that was true, but the Dark Lord's service — or perhaps it was twelve years as a rat — had done much more. Whatever spark of arrogance had reflected on him from his friends, from the glow of being placed in Gryffindor, had diminished, leaving behind a cringing, twitching, pitiful pile of rat-flesh with eyes.

"Why are you here, Snape?"

Severus turned away from Pettigrew in utter contempt.

"Where is the Dark Lord?" he asked, quietly, "I will answer to no one but him."

" _Yes_." Severus suppressed a shiver as a high, cold voice rang out from further inside the house. "Bring our guest to me, Wormtail. Ah, and take his wand."

" _Expelliarmus_ ," Severus said, in a careless sort of tone, Disarming Pettigrew before he had even opened his mouth. He added another pair of hexes, jolting Pettigrew with a bolt of spelled lightning, and sending him crashing against the nearest wall for good measure.

 _Not so tough without your friends_ , he observed, and he let the hatred, the derision for Pettigrew, and the aura of aggression from the spells waft through his mind like a perfume. It would only help, now.

He followed the cold voice further into the manor, until he reached a small room near the back, where a fireplace burned brightly, lighting the room more effectively than any of the others. A high-backed armchair was silhouetted against the flames, facing the doorway, but it was unoccupied.

He stopped, at the doorway to the room.

"I have returned, My Lord," Severus said, slipping his wand reluctantly back into his pocket. He knew with utter certainty that the Dark Lord was in that room, whether he could see him or not, he was just as certain that whether or not he lived long enough to carry out his plan might well depend on how he entered it.

"Have you now, Snape?"

A voice he had not heard in a very long time; then there was a soft flurry of motion, and the younger Bartemius Crouch stood before him, mouth curved in an arrogant smile, wand pointed dead at his face.

"Barty," Snape acknowledged him, deliberately choosing to use the man's first name; and then he answered the question: "I have."

"We shall see," Barty said, and then: " _Accio Snape's wand._ "

It wasn't in his hand, so he couldn't be Disarmed; he snarled, reaching for his wand as it sailed past his fingers and into Barty Crouch, Jr.'s. He should have been prepared, should have been faster, but he was so focused on the other presence he _knew_ was in that room —

" _Crucio_."

Severus let his voice howl out of his mouth, let his knees and the outer parts of his mind cave in to the pain, and he pulled the core of himself tight behind his barriers, as his agonised body was dragged further into the room. Retreating didn't lessen the pain; nothing would. But it did let him keep his mind, his sanity, at least for the moment.

When the haze of pain cleared, he was in the armchair, magical ropes lashing him so tight he could scarcely breathe, let alone reach for his wand, even if it hadn't been removed from his possession. Barty stood over him, a look of grim satisfaction painted all over his freckled face; Pettigrew had crept to the doorway too, and was grinning with gleeful delight at his predicament. None of that, though, was what made his blood run chill in his veins.

Lord Voldemort himself stood next to Barty, statuesque and commanding. He looked even less human than the last time Severus had seen him; his nose was little more than a pair of slits, his chin and forehead angular, the very picture of a poisonous viper, except for the eyes.

The eyed were a deep red, a banked fire; and they were trained unwaveringly on Severus Snape, who was helpless and nearly breathless in the chair, body still wracked with the lingering ache of the Unforgivable curse.

"Severus," the Dark Lord crooned, "What a delightful surprise."

"My Lord," Severus said, as evenly as he could.

"Am I?" Voldemort asked, reptilian face betraying nothing. "Am I still your Lord, Severus?"

"Always," Severus said, unwavering.

"No," the Dark Lord corrected, smiling coldly. " _Not_ always, I think. Not when you thwarted my servant's efforts to obtain the Philospher's Stone, certainly."

"I did not know Quirrell was your agent," Severus said, "Not until it was too late; and for that, for my ignorance I beg your forgiveness. I sought only to prevent someone unworthy from reaching the Stone. I had no notion that he…" Severus allowed his nostrils to flare, slightly. "Forgive me, My Lord, but he did not seem… worthy… of your esteem, and so it never crossed my mind…"

"Why didn't you seek our Lord out?" Barty interrupted, licking his lips, "If you truly still serve him, why didn't you go to him, as I did, and help him return?"

Voldemort's eyes flickered briefly to his right.

"I shall ask the questions," he said, coldly, but Severus answered the question anyway.

"If I had any way of knowing that you were still out there, My Lord, I _would_ have come to you; but again I must apologise for my ignorance. I, like so many others who served you faithfully, believed the Ministry's lies, that you were truly lost to us."

"So you turned tail," Voldemort hissed, "Grovelled at Dumbledore's feet, offered to serve him, instead, as you had once served me."

Pettigrew smirked; Severus suppressed a flash of hatred that managed to flicker, even through the layers of careful lies and controlled fear in his mind.

"Yes," Severus admitted, quietly, letting his chin drop in a gesture of shame, though he kept his eyes fixed on those red ones, "It shames me to admit it, My Lord, but I did offer Dumbledore my temporary allegiance in exchange for protection from Azkaban. When I thought that you had left us; I, as many others did, told the Aurors that I had been controlled under an Imperius Curse, and… and I have teaching Potions ever since; at Hogwarts, and at Dumbledore's right hand; but now, I have returned to the one I truly wish to serve."

The Dark Lord's expression shifted into one of cold amusement. "Potions, Severus?" he asked, with an unmistakable note of derision.

"It is all I have been permitted to teach, My Lord. Dumbledore thought… he thought that allowing me to teach the Defence Against the Dark Arts would tempt me back to my old ways… and of course, he would have been correct, because the truth is that I have never left them."

He could see the indecision plain on the Dark Lord's face; the fact that he could meant that Voldemort had decided not to hide it from him; and _that_ fact might very well mean that his fate was very nearly decided, that the Dark Lord did not see the need in guarding his expression from a man soon to be dead…

The old fool trusts me," he said quickly, leaning forward painfully and earnestly against the bite of the ropes that still bound him, "He has confided his plans, his intentions in me, for the past fifteen years, believing I really was his man; and now, tonight, when I felt the pull of the Mark and wished for nothing more than to return to you, at once, I waited until he gave me the order to do so."

The Dark Lord's expression shifted, abruptly, and once once again unreadable.

"You are here on Dumbledore's orders?" he asked, softly.

"Yes," Severus said, affecting a grim satisfaction, "Or at least, that is what he thinks."

The Dark Lord's mouth spread into a thin, cold smirk. "You understand the penalty, Severus, for desertion?"

Severus' mouth was suddenly dry. "Yes," he croaked, fighting against the scent of blood, the screams of pain that swam across his memory, in the first layer of his mind, where he had deliberately arranged them. "But I have not —"

The Dark Lord cut him off, a flick of his wand effectively silencing him. His mouth worked, but no sound escaped.

"It is a harsh penalty," the Dark Lord said softly, "But a necessary one; and it occurs to me that, after thirteen years, a little reminder of the penalty may be in order, for all of my servants..."

Without his voice, Severus could not protest, could not embellish the advantages he could offer, from his position at Dumbledore's side all these years. Fear hardened into terror, pulsing wildly in the darkest, most secret corners of his mind. Outwardly, he set his face grimly, and met the Dark Lord's gaze as steadily as he could, knowing that his life would be only the beginning of the price for wavering, now.

"I cherish loyalty," the Dark Lord mused, deceptively unconcerned, "And I cherish honesty, just as fiercely, from my servants." He stepped closer, and aimed his wand. "How will I punish you, Severus, if you possess neither of them? I will kill you, certainly, for desertion, and I will make you suffer so intensely before I do that you shall beg for death's release, but…"

With his other hand, with exaggerated deliberateness, Voldemort lifted long, delicate fingers, and tapped one to his chin twice, three times. "What else can I destroy, if I discover that you have lied to me?"

 _No_. He grimly suppressed another spike of terror, forced himself not to think her name, and he locked his eyes grimly on the red ones before him.

"His daughter," Barty said, from a few steps beyond, "You could destroy her; though I suppose Bella might miss her, too."

It was a good thing that he could not speak, that the ropes held him so tightly to the chair, or he would have ripped Barty's throat out, wand or no; he would have used his fucking _teeth_ , if he had to.

The Dark Lord chuckled.

"I don't think Severus is particularly fond of your suggestion, Barty," he said, and then, coldly:

" _Legilimens!_ "

The Dark Lord's strength assaulted his barriers at once, and he heard a small sound of struggle escape his lips, as he was released from the Silencing Spell simultaneously.

This, he had been expecting; he was as prepared as he could be, or he had been, before the Dark Lord's little speech, before Barty's suggestion; and it occurred to him just in time that perhaps they had counted on rattling him.

He opened his first barrier willingly, knowing that was what the Dark Lord expected of his followers; he felt the insidious presence slithering among his thoughts, his memories, picking apart the threads of his mind with no regard whatsoever for privacy or delicacy.

He waited, behind his second barrier, monitoring the Dark Lord's progress through the busy, swirling — and carefully arranged — outer layer of his mind.

He had placed enough of his darker memories here; things he had done, things he had witnessed, as a Death Eater, when he _had_ truly served this lord; the miserable, lonely teenager he had been, and the rejection that had sent him spiraling into the Dark Lord's fold in the first place; an overwhelming sense of disgust, of despising, that he had carefully attached to the Dark Lord's enemies.

The memories of Calista that he had allowed to swirl, here, in this layer, were mundane, largely inconsequential, and he had dulled his emotional response to them as well as he could; these, he could sense the Dark Lord skipping over, utterly disinterested, and the relief of that realisation was a physical cooling blast in his gut.

Instead, the Dark Lord focused on the clusters of memory that pertained to Albus Dumbledore. He witnessed the Dark Lord poring through these, deliberately, critically; his arguments, and disagreements, to which he had attached threads of disdain and more hatred; the moments between them had seemed almost like friendship, and Severus' gloating satisfaction at having fooled the old man.

And then, he let the Dark Lord see key snippets of information, small puzzle pieces; not enough to act on, truly, but enough to prove that he _had_ them; enough to prove that he had the gift of the Headmaster's confidence and trust, that the silver-plated bargaining chip he had offered to his Master as he sat bound to this chair was not a fabrication.

Voldemort hissed softly. There was a brief respite, while Voldemort's presence still slithered through his mind, but did not act, did not seek, did not strike; and _then_ —

A sharp battering at his next barrier, and _this_ one, Severus made a convincingly valiant attempt to hold. Of course the Dark Lord knew that Severus was an Occlumens; of course he knew that no matter how loyal his servant professed to be, he would still attempt to hide some secrets from his Master.

Severus grit his teeth, holding the barrier as long as he dared; and then, when he felt Voldemort's strength begin to wane in proportion to his swiftly sharpening rage, Severus let the wall crumble down, broken apart.

"Yes," the Dark Lord crooned, "Yes, let's see what it is you hoped to hide from me… what you did not wish me to see…"

The space here was deliberately vast, deliberately full, deliberately _wild_. Here, he had hidden a maelstrom of emotion, a massive tangle of thought, a sea of images to sort through; all of them were more personal, or more private, than what he had already allowed the Dark Lord to see; and all of them were carefully selected to obfuscate the existence of yet another barrier, far beyond even this deep-seated portion of his mind.

The emotional storm reacted, reared up, at each pass of the Dark Lord's presence, each examination of a memory or thought; some, like anger, or hatred, or revulsion, the Dark Lord seemed to revel in. He revelled, too, in much of the pain, Severus' pain; he sneered at the image of Lily, at the bittersweet tangle of love and irrevocable loss.

And then, increasingly, as Voldemort drew closer to what Severus hoped the Dark Lord would perceive as his core, he encountered more of these softer emotions, feelings of protection and belonging and a family bonded by shared hurts and dark eyes. He could not exclude these memories, or his farce would be immediately detected; but he had carefully curated some, and painstakingly altered others. Still some were guarded behind the third barrier, the one the Dark Lord must not see; and precious few were bound so tightly to his core that he would take them with him, utterly unseen, if the Dark Lord did decide to punish him, after all, for desertion.

Severus suppressed a shudder, as the venomous influence touched on the memories of his daughter, but he did not have long to wallow in the discomfort; the Dark Lord hissed again, audibly, and recoiled from a flash of a memory that dripped with things that could only be described as _love_ , and where even his tender grief for Lily had not caused such intense revulsion, even the merest touch against his memories and feelings for Calista sent the Dark Lord coiling away, sent him blindly latching onto other memories.

Severus had a ready supply; he lost count of the minutes, the hours, that bled into each other, as he fed the Dark Lord all the pieces of his mind, all the threads and images and waves of emotion that made him, that made Severus Snape; as the assault wore on, he grew weary, not from resisting, but from forcing himself to relive all of the worst parts of himself, from avoiding the cluster of fierce brightness that had so revolted the Dark Lord, and that was the key to the third and final layer of his mind.

At last, the attack was done; at last, he felt the slithering withdraw of the Dark Lord, allowed his first, his weakest barrier to reform; but it was thin and weak, just as Severus now felt.

The cords were vanished, and he was pulled to unsteady feet. Severus had the bleary impression that his entire body had gone liquid while his mind had been under the unyielding assault; in that moment, the only thing in his entire being that felt solid was the third barrier in his mind, undetected and undisturbed.

"Wormtail, prepare one of the bedrooms for Severus; he will stay here, until our next full meeting. He and I have much to discuss."

 _Wormtail._ It seemed a fitting name for the putrid waste of flesh that scurried, now, to obey his Master's orders, though not without some indistinct muttering.

"You are certain he can be trusted, My Lord?" Barty ventured, from where he now leaned against the far wall, eyes watchful. "You will allow him to return, even after he was so conspicuously absent when you called?"

"Yes," the Dark Lord said, "I will allow him to return." He grasped Severus' hand, in a manner that walked the line between steadying and controlling.

"Thank you, My Lord," Severus made himself say, hating the false gratitude and the very real relief that crept into his tone, "I promise you shall not regret this."

"Of course, you must understand Severus, Barty does have a point. Your absence was noticed, earlier."

"I came as soon as I could do so without sacrificing my place, My Lord — my very valuable place — I came as soon as I could."

"Yes," the Dark Lord crooned, "I shall take that into account, of course; but surely you understand there can be no disobedience without a price? You will still help me set an example, when next my Death Eaters gather, a reminder of how unquestioningly I expect to be obeyed; but since you have not deserted me, and since you have not lied, you have my word that you will live through this punishment; you will be forgiven, when it is done, and you be restored to your position among my most valued Death Eaters; but first, you will be punished."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista leaned over the cauldron, stirring carefully, and inhaling as deeply as she could, but even the fresh, herbal smell of dittany could not clear her thoughts, or the heaviness that had invaded her so thoroughly ever since her father had gone.

It had been years, or it had been a day; her weary mind told her one thing while the clock in his study told her another.

She put out the flame and reached for an empty jar, and promptly dropped it as a now-familiar spark pressed at the back of her mind; she sucked in her breath desperately over the faint shatter of glass, and braced herself for the spear of fear, for the terrible echo of a pained scream to grip her.

It didn't, this time; instead, words came to her, faint and light, like the pinpricks of distant stars.

 _Moody_ , she heard, and then she missed a few words; she frowned, turning her concentration inward to the part of her mind that lit up, marking the anchor of their shared memory.

— _keys are here, have to break the Charms. Tell Dumbledore… he should still be alive, if…_

The words faded, flared back: _today._

 _Dad!_ She sent the desperate thread of thought towards him, through the anchor, though she knew it was likely to be futile, at whatever distance he was at, without a mirroring anchor in _his_ mind. _Dad, please tell me you are all right!_

She waited the space of a few weeks, or a few moments, and then she let her breath out, a shaky, choking sound that threatened to shift into a sob, but she would not let it.

It did not make any sense, of course; nothing she did here, save carry his messages, could make a difference where he was. And yet, still: she had resolved not to let herself cry, not to let herself give up; and every few moments, when the prospect of doing both swelled in its appeal, she told herself again to stay strong, and she kept repeating what he had said. _I promise you that I will return safely._ She had believed him, once before, and staying strong had allowed him to do just that, to save them both.

The sharp, pleasing smell of dittany drifted towards her from the cauldron, and she remembered that the brew had to be jarred and cooled immediately, or it would lose some of its potency. She used her wand to clean up the broken glass from the first jar, took a second, and filled it with the mixture, and then she capped it and set it aside, casting a Freezing Charm on the jar that she knew would hold long enough to do what it needed to.

She cleaned the cauldron, quickly, and then, squaring her shoulders, she made herself walk up the stairs, out of her father's basement workroom, and — for the first time since he'd left her here — out of her father's quarters, into the corridor beyond.

Mercifully, she didn't run into many students on her way, and even though the few that she did pass recognised her with a bewildered look, she pressed on, mouth set grimly, until she reached the stone gargoyle on the third floor.

"Fizzing Whizbee," she said, and as soon as the gargoyle shifted, she raced up the spiral staircase; she lifted her fist, ready to knock heavily, when the door suddenly swung open.

The Headmaster's gaze was solemn, questioning, as he ushered her silently into his office.

"Do you have a message for me, Calista?" Professor Dumbledore asked, as the door closed quietly behind them.

"Yes," she said, meeting his gaze; it was calm, if still solemn, and inquisitive, and —

"How can you let him do this?" she burst out, aggrieved, "He's — they're hurting him, and… and…"

She expected to be interrupted, but the Headmaster merely waited, politely, for her to finish her thought.

"It's enough," she finished lamely, tightening her throat against the burn of tears that she would not shed, "It's — he needs to come back."

The Headmaster's gaze was unchanging. "This is your father's message?"

Calista felt the burn in her throat turn into something much fiercer; her eyes narrowed, and her fingers twitched,

" _No_ ," she growled, "It's _mine_."

And then: "You don't even care, do you? You don't care if he —" No, those words could not come out, any more than her tears could. Another flickering spark, in the back of her mind; a flicker of fear, but at least — mercifully — not pain, this time. Her throat worked, her gut heaved.

"Moody's in his trunk," she spat out suddenly, "Crouch still has the keys. You'll have to break the Charms. It should be today."

The Headmaster was quite still for a moment, and Calista wondered if he had heard her. When she looked up at him again, his brilliant blue eyes were fixed on her, not quite searching, but assessing.

At last, he brushed by her, wordlessly, periwinkle robes swishing, and she wondered wildly if he meant to leave her here; her glance darted, briefly, to the fireplace, as another flicker of fear burned at her mind, but she didn't even know where to go, and she had _promised_.

"Calista," the Headmaster said, quietly, from behind her, "Come with me. Time is short, and we may need you."

Swallowing her emotions and another burning threat of tears, Calista followed the Headmaster, as they left his study. She followed him to Professor Flitwick's quarters, where he tersely explained the situation, and then she followed both of them to the Defence professor's office.

It had changed, since she had been here the year before; where the shelves and corners had held dusty books and the occasional odd creature, there were now Dark Detectors and Sneakoscopes; she even saw a Foe-Glass, shadowy shapes lurking distantly within it.

Dumbledore spell-locked the office door with a series of intricate charms, and then he and Flitwick approached the large, hulking trunk that sat next to Moody's desk.

It had seven formidable-looking locks on it, and Dumbledore tapped his wand to the first one, but he did not use an Unlocking Charm, as Calista expected. Instead, he muttered a Detection Spell.

"As I suspected," he said, turning to Flitwick, "These locks are embedded with powerful offensive Charms, which will triggered by an Unlocking Spell; we will need to break them before we can open it."

Flitwick frowned. "I suppose it would be too much to hope that the charms are connected," he mused, "That there is only one layer to break?"

"Yes, Filius, I'm afraid that would be too much to hope for; it seems that each of the seven locks is embedded with a separate combination of spells. I fear that this will not be quick, and yet, we may have precious little time."

Flitwick tapped his own wand to each of the locks, in turn; he muttered a complicated series of detection and searching spells; a few times, he shook his head and began again. Another flicker of fear licked at Calista's mind, gripping her gut.

"The spells need to be broken in order," Flitwick said, at last, "It is indeed a complex arrangement; it will take time, but perhaps a bit less if we tackle it together."

Dumbledore nodded, as if he had more or less expected this; and then, he turned, and Calista found herself the subject of his intense gaze again.

"Will you assist us, Calista?"

She blinked. "What?"

"The spells embedded to these locks all appear to be charms; the more skilled wands we can turn to them, the quicker we can find Alastor, and, I hope, the better chance we have of saving him before he perishes of thirst. It would be foolish, with time so critical, to overlook an apprentice of the Experimental Charms Committee so readily at our disposal; so I ask you again, Calista, will you assist us?"

She was still gripped, every few minutes or every few hours, by agnosing, unwelcome flickers from the anchor point in her mind; she was low on sleep, she was due to reapply the essence of dittany; and beyond all of that, she was still terrified of Moody, imposter or no; a shiver gripped her, as her gaze slid between the Headmaster's and Professor Flitwick.

"Yes," she said, stepping forward, and gripping the reassuring pine of her wand as she moved to stand with them, "I'll help break the charms."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Calista's fingers shook when they dipped into the little jar, scooping a healthy glob of the dittany she'd brewed earlier — had that really been only earlier _today_?

She was glad for the relative dark in her room, eased only by the witchfire nightlight at the other end, when she stripped most of her clothes off, and began applying the salve.

The scars were pink and shiny against her pale skin; and perhaps it was her imagination, or perhaps it was because she had missed at least three doses today, but she thought they looked angrier, uglier than they had earlier this morning.

Her shoulders already ached, from hours hunched over that enchanted chest, untangling the sinister charms and complicated locking spells with the Headmaster and Professor Flitwick; but she'd been calling him Filius by the end of it, as they worked fervently together and with Dumbledore, against the flow of time. It had been exhausting, complicated work, and when they had finally cracked the last lock, had finally revealed the deep, grave-like chamber where the real Moody lay unconscious and ragged, she had been sweating and sagging and practically numb with effort, and she had not been the only one.

If they had ached, since then, her shoulders burned now, as she bent low and far enough to reach the scars that crossed her hips, her thighs. It took more than she'd realised it was going to, to coat the scars, though it wasn't the first time she'd done so. She would have to make more of the salve, probably; but _could she?_ She was so thoroughly drained that it took her fifteen minutes to find the energy to simply pull a clean nightdress over her head; and when she looked at her blankets, tucked neatly and firmly into the corners of her mattress by unseen house-elves, she knew that she could not expel the effort even to peel them back, with her hands or with her wand.

She dropped onto her bed, above the bedclothes, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, with her wand still clenched in her fist, and her mind utterly silent, for once.

It was hours later that she awoke; she sat up, gripped by apprehension, as she realised that something in the distance was grasping at her attention.

 _Dad_ , she thought, automatically, but no; the anchor point was silent. It was something on the _outside_ , an insistent, faraway pounding…

She leapt out of bed, faintly surprised to find her fingers already wrapped around her wand. She lifted it in front of her, and cautiously advanced down the main corridor of her father's quarters, eyes fixed on the door at the end, where the pounding seemed to be coming from, or beyond.

"We know you're in there," a female voice said, as the pounding paused; but it was a _young_ female voice, and one that she thought she knew. Calista opened the door, stepping into her father's office, and the pounding immediately rose in volume.

"Open the door," came a different, but equally familiar voice, "Before _we_ do it with a Blasting Curse."

"Eva, stop, it's still a professor's door, we can't —"

Calista fumbled with the lock, and then wrenched open the door; there was a brief moment of shocked peace, before she was fiercely and firmly held in place, by three very insistent sets of squeezing arms.

" _Calista!_ " Sofia Lima squealed, the highest set of arms, her voice unnervingly close to Calista's unprotected ear, "It _is_ you, you're here!"

Daisy Spratt and Eva Selwyn's mouths opened, too, and then Calista was hopelessly lost in rising chatter, and still utterly unable to move.

She protested, and tried several times to extricate herself, but somehow, she ended up being propelled down the corridor by the three of them; they had to let go of her waist to walk, but that didn't stop Eva from gripping her wrist, seemingly heedless of her wand, or Daisy from slipping her hand into Calista's free one, and gripping it tightly.

"Wait," Calista heard herself say, "I can't, I have to —" Well, she couldn't very well tell them that she'd planned to stand sentry, all day, in her father's study; couldn't admit that she had planned on watching each agonising second tick by, as she listened for the wretched _flicker_ in her mind.

"You have to come with us," Sofia said, thrusting out her chest with the shiny Prefect's badge, "We all agreed, as soon as Tabitha said she saw you in corridor yesterday, that we would find you, and that we wouldn't take no for an answer."

"I — I —"

She paused; there hadn't been a flicker, in several hours, or if there had, it had been too weak to pierce her sleep, as the others had repeatedly done, the first night. She did not know if that was a good sign or a bad one; she did not know anything, except that she had countless hours to tick by today, remembering the dittany when she could, and — oh, _Merlin._

"I'm in my nightdress," she hissed, suddenly mortified, and yanked her wrist free; her hand took more effort. She yanked, but Daisy held fast.

"That's okay," Daisy said, "I can fix that — hold still. Eva, help me hold her her again."

"What — what are you doing?"

Eva took up her other wrist again, and Sofia leapt forward to take the wrist above Daisy's hand.

"Go on then, Daisy," Sofia said, "Quickly, before she bites one of us."

Calista snarled, yanking both of her arms free, just as Daisy performed a complicated little motion with her wand, and suddenly, Calista was wearing white trousers and a top in the same fabric of her old nightdress.

"I still haven't figured out changing the material," Daisy said, apologetically, "Or the colours. But look, you're not in your nightdress anymore."

Somehow, utterly against every single one of her intentions, Calista found herself being dragged along, again; her friends tugged her stubbornly up staircase after staircase, until they ended up in a very familiar seventh-floor corridor. The girls paced, at least one of them keeping a grip on Calista until the door behind the tapestry was revealed, and they hurried her unceremoniously inside.

The room was nothing like Calista had ever seen it; it was bright, with patterned wallpaper and thick, purple carpet, and strewn with an assortment of pouffy, brightly-coloured chairs. There was also — thank Merlin — a bookshelf, though a preliminary glance revealed more sacks of dungbombs than books, and Sofia managed to procure an assortment of snacks from a cupboard set into the far wall.

"I already told the room we needed _at least_ four hours to catch up," Daisy said, smiling innocently when Calista's eyes slid towards the door, "It won't let us out unless there's an emergency; so you might as well take the green chair, before Eva does. It's the most comfortable."

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

For three days, the little knot of memory where her father had anchored herself was clear and calm, though she could still feel it there, humming; could still sense the connection, however distant, even though nothing came along it.

She visited wither her friends again, realising that she probably needed the distraction, that listening to their chatter and gossip made the days pass much quicker than watching the clock did; and she visited with Professor Flitwick again, too — no, Filius. Somehow, now that they had gone through the aching, harrowing ordeal with the Charmed locks together, he felt more familiar than he had before; and perhaps it was her imagination, but it seemed that he spoke to her differently, now, too; almost as if she really _were_ a member of the Hogwarts staff, filling in on stocking the hospital wing while her father was away, which was the feeble-feeling lie she'd fed to her boss Astra, at St. Mungo's.

She had three owls from Gerald, during those first few days, all of them variations on the same message: _I'm worried about you; I miss you; please call me._

She wanted to, she'd realised, opening the first one; if Daisy's clever transfigurations and Eva's exploits and Sofia's laughter had been a sorely needed distraction, then how many similarly necessary distractions could she find with _him_ , in his clever phrases and soft words, his gentle hands and pleasing mouth? But she could not forget what her father had said, before he'd gone:

 _You must stay guarded about what you are doing here, even from him. If you cannot, we will have no choice but to modify his memory._

How could she risk that consequence, when she knew it was what he feared most? She had no doubt that she _could_ hide her purpose from him, but she was equally as certain that she wouldn't want to; that once she saw him, once his fingers brushed her ear and his arms wrapped securely around her, she would _want_ to tell him everything, to hear him murmur a reassurance that Severus would be okay, that everything would; and she did not think she could bear that ache of loneliness, of not being able to confide in him, on top of everything else, and so she had to content herself with a brief reply by owl, on the fourth day:

 _Gerald,_

 _I miss you, too. I'm sorry that I can't call, but I have too much here to do. I'm keeping the hospital wing stocked with potions, and it's more work than I anticipated._

 _You don't need to worry about me. I'm fine, if slightly exhausted._

 _Te amo, mea dulcis noctua._

 _Calista_

On the fifth day, another insistent knock woke her from sleep, but this one was far more nerve-wracking, and far less welcome than the one from her friends; it was the Headmaster, inviting her to accompany him to the hospital wing, to meet the man she had helped save; the one she had thought she'd met, thought she'd dueled.

It was unsettling, and she immediately wondered why she'd agreed to go. The encounter as a strange sort of role reversal, from her first meeting with the imposter. This time it was she who stood wary watch, and Moody who was lying nearly helpless on a crisp white bed.

He looked quite different, with his shrunken frame, hair even more unkempt than she'd ever see it, missing his wooden leg and his magical eye; and still, even without it, his gaze felt uncomfortably penetrating.

"Calista Snape," Moody said, gruffly, after a moment had passed; once he had made the introductions, Dumbledore had retreated to the edge of the room, and though he looked unconcerned, Calista had no doubt that he was watching, listening. She wasn't certain if that reassured her or frightened her. "I'm told I owe you some manner of thanks."

"That's not necessary."

Moody grunted. "Not necessary? Albus told me how you helped, with the locks on my trunk." His voice was the same, but the tone just slightly, almost imperceptibly different from the one she'd heard. It lacked the eerie familiarity that had somehow triggered her dreams to remember Crouch.

"Must have been damn fine Charmwork," Moody continued, "Since I see you still have both of your eyes, which is more than I can say for myself, eh?"

Calista suppressed a shiver, finding the man himself far more unsettling than the empty socket; he might not be a Death Eater, after all, but he was still the man she'd always been afraid of; still the ruthless Auror that would have undoubtedly tortured her and tossed her in Azkaban along with her mother, if he'd ever found her.

"Professor Dumbledore and F — Professor Flitwick asked me to help," she said, far more coolly than she felt, "So I did."

He nodded, sending locks of grizzled grey hair leaping around the pillow. "So you did," he agreed, and then his one good eye seemed to bore into hers. "Something else you did, from what I hear. Seems you were the first one to realise I'd been replaced by an imposter. Since to my recollection, we've never met, that's pretty damn impressive."

"I'd met _him_ ," Calista said, drawing her shoulders up, knowing the condemnation for that fact was coming; and while she was at it, she might as well face the rest of what still weighed on her, from that night; what made her think, bitterly, that perhaps she deserved the still-pink scars across her torso. "And I didn't realise it soon enough, obviously."

 _He still came back._

She hadn't said it, but Moody seemed to know exactly what she'd meant, anyway.

"Voldemort was coming back, one way or another," he told her quietly, "Some of us have always known; some of us have been watching the signs. Maybe if you'd seen that guttersnipe for what he was sooner, it would have happened a different way. Still would have happened."

"Perhaps a different tragedy was prevented," Calista nearly started, as the Headmaster's voice rumbled from behind her, "Your discovery led us to stop the Tournament, even if it did not stop Lord Voldemort's return. We will never know what might have passed, what might have gone differently; and so it does not do to dwell on things that cannot be changed."

"There's where we disagree, Albus," Moody said, "I say it does damn well to dwell, as long as it helps you prepare for the next time. I reckon none of us will be fooled by Polyjuice Potion again, eh?"

"I certainly hope not," the Headmaster said, mildly.

Moody drifted off to sleep shortly after that; it was unnerving, to say the least, since he kept his one good eye open, and he seemed to twitch whenever anyone in the room moved.

She had the strange impression, when Dumbledore courteously insisted on walking with her back to her father's quarters, that she had just been, perhaps even was still being, assessed; but for what? If they didn't realise by now that she wasn't her mother's daughter, then they never would.

She checked the spell-locks on the door twice, before letting herself wearily in, and reaching for the jar of dittany.

She pretended not to notice that the scars still were not fading.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

The sixth day was unbearable.

She was brewing the dittany again, a concentrated batch this time, since the shiny pink lines still looked more or less the same as they had the day after the duel, when the anchor point began to flicker; she waited for it to pass, and ruined the potion three separate times when it didn't; instead, the flicker became a steady stream of anxiety, a rising tide of apprehension, and even though it had a small, tight origin in her mind, she could not stop it from overtaking _all_ of her; or perhaps, for some perverse reason, she didn't _want_ to stop it.

As night fell, she abandoned all pretense of brewing anything, of doing anything but keeping watch. The anxiety inside her mind crested into terror, and _then_ —

Pain; unbearable, unyielding, unending pain. She could not feel it herself, though she could hear the echoing scream, clouding that corner and every corner of her mind, but she did not need to; she had felt it before, she knew what it was to have nerves ablaze, skin twisting, muscles screaming, bone bending, breaking but still somehow whole.

Her body felt soft and weak, her own nerves utterly shot; she gripped the back of one of her father's armchairs until her nails dug into the upholstery, until her knuckles were white and aching and locked in place, and she stared at the hateful clock, watched each second jerk harshly into the next; on and on, until, surely, a hundred years had passed.

Finally, silence. Stillness. She exhaled, choking on fire.

Another flicker, in the back of her mind, before she could even catch a single breath. She braced herself for another silent scream, but there was just one word, urgent and commanding:

 _Stay._

He was undoubtedly alive. That was the only comfort she could claim, as she looked down with detachment at her own tired hands, half-expecting them to be gnarled and twisted with age.

They were not. They were merely white and trembling, and it took her three tries to detach them from the chair.

She stumbled the few steps it took her to end up on the other side of it, collapsed into the chair, little more than a shaking, breathless tangle of arms and legs and shiny, pink scars.

The hateful clock; she watched it, through the eerie, unbroken silence, awaiting another wave, another howl, another scream. She waited, until the clock had circled itself entirely, letting her insides fill with tears, but not allowing a single one to fall; not allowing a single, shaking breath to choke its way into a sob, because she had promised to stay strong, and to wait, and perhaps the not-crying was mad, but it had gotten them this far.

And then, finally, when she could not bear a single second more of the clock, of the waiting, of the useless trembling of her hands, she heard the door at the head of the corridor opening; she found her feet and almost lost them again immediately, and she stumbled into the arms of the the man she'd been standing sentry for, digging her nails as fiercely into his as she had done to his chair; pretending not to notice his haunted, grey face just as she had pretended not to notice her scars.

"Dad," she gasped, and then there was nothing she could do to prevent the relentless, burning flood of tears. "You — you came back."

His fingers clutched her shoulders just as desperately as she clung to him, and when his weight sagged against her, Calista realised that even her tired, trembling limbs were steady enough, when they needed to be, to hold him up.

"My — my strong, clever daughter," Severus croaked hoarsely, "I did promise."


	16. Leverage

**PART TWO**

 **2\. Leverage**

For hours after Severus returned from the Dark Lord, he sat, grim-faced and trembling in his favourite armchair; and in yet another role reversal, Calista was the one stayed with him through the nightmares, a protective shadow offering comfort when he would accept it, and companionable silence when he would not.

He did not go to his room to sleep, though he was surely in sore need of it, and Calista refused to go to hers; when he snatched bits of fitful sleep in his chair, Calista tried to do the same, but found that she could not quite bring herself to close her eyes to him, because she didn't think she could bear it if he were not there when she opened them.

When he dreamt, during those brief moments of restless sleep, Calista could feel his alarm, urgent and pressing in her mind, and she ached helplessly, knowing all too well what it felt like, but also knowing that he had to sleep, if he could.

She had breakfast sent up in the morning, and when she couldn't rouse him from his chair for that, she had lunch sent up a few hours later, and finally managed to coax him to the kitchen. Her stomach felt too tense to handle either meal, so she sipped on coffee, instead, until she'd had so much that it began to feel sour and raw in her gut.

"I'm glad we're going home tomorrow," Calista finally ventured, after her father had finished eating, but had not risen from the table. When he merely frowned, Calista continued, "We _are_ going home tomorrow, right?"

It was the last day of term, and Calista had already missed an entire week of work. If not for the fact that it was now technically her uncle paying her salary, she was nearly certain she wouldn't have had one to go back to.

"We will be leaving Hogwarts tomorrow," her father said, "I plan on returning home."

Before she even had a chance to properly register her relief, his eyes flickered up to her face, a question visible on his features.

"How would you feel about your staying somewhere else, for a few days? Your Aunt Andromeda's home, perhaps, or B — Gerald's?"

Calista blinked. "It's… it's still not safe to go back home?"

He hedged.

"I really don't want to stay with anyone else," she said, but she could tell by the sudden shifting of the lines in his face that he had decided something. She felt her heart sink, knowing it was going to something she wouldn't like.

"I don't believe our home will be unsafe for me," Severus finally said, quietly, "But I do fear that I may have certain — visitors — over the next few days that I would rather not subject you to."

"I already know about Mrs. Yaxley," she reminded him, with a deliberate light dryness, but it did nothing for the brittle mood in the little kitchen.

"There is nothing amusing about any of this," her father said, in a soft sort of voice that made her gut suddenly heave. She instantly regretted her sixth cup of coffee.

"I'm sorry," she said, around the sour feeling in her mouth, "I just — I suppose I was just trying to say something, _anything_ that might trick me into thinking things are normal, just for a moment."

"They're not," Severus said shortly, and then: "I suppose, after everything you must have sensed, you deserve the truth. Crouch mentioned you to the Dark Lord while I was with them. I do not know what might have been said before I arrived."

Her heart hammered, and she could feel the sour crawl of the coffee working its way up her throat.

"I do not think the Dark Lord has decided, yet, that you are interesting. I would very much prefer that he never does; keeping you utterly out of sight from anyone _else_ that might think to mention you to him seems sound, at the moment."

"What about…" Calista swallowed a sour lump that felt suspiciously like vomit, "What about Uncle Lucius? Is he… did he…?"

"He knows that it is my utmost intention to keep you away from the Dark Lord and his followers," her father said, which told her enough, non-answer that it was, "Nevertheless, I would feel more comfortable, at the moment, if you were not to visit the manor."

It was an utter departure from everything she knew. When she could not be with him, he had always, _always_ preferred that she was with her aunt and uncle. That, it seemed, was no longer the case.

It struck her that Draco, barely fifteen-year-old and highly impressionable _Draco_ , was still going home on the train tomorrow, was still going to the very same manor that her father did not want _her_ to go to, lest she encounter another of the Dark Lord's servants there, and suddenly, she could no longer hold onto the contents of her stomach.

"Excuse me," she managed to mumble, fumbling out of her chair with enough clumsiness and force to send it toppling noisily to the floor behind her; she just made it to the tiny bathroom, where she promptly expelled all six cups of coffee.

It was a long time before she could bring herself to leave the bathroom; it seemed to her that once she did, she would have to face it all again: the newly-grey sallowness of her father's face; her recollection of Potter's blanched and bloodstained skin as he told them all _He's back_ ; the shadowed, haunting memories of _before_ that were fighting to surface in her mind, that were suddenly almost indistinguishable from _now_.

When she finally returned to the kitchen, her father was on his feet, not quite as grey and not quite as grim as she had left him. He had changed into a fresh set of robes.

"I am expected to make an appearance at the end of term feast shortly," he said, "You are welcome to attend, but you don't have to."

"They're still having the feast?" It seemed utterly absurd; but then, in her current state, _everything_ did. Food; work; sunlight. They all suddenly seemed like things that belonged to a different world entirely.

"Yes. And the Headmaster has decided to inform the students of the Dark Lord's return; how many will believe him, when the Ministry is dead set on ignoring the facts, remains to be seen."

Her heart picked up speed, hammering against a chest that felt hollow, and still somehow sour.

"It's not a nightmare," she murmured, jaw aching as the words rolled around in her mouth, "It's really happening, isn't it?"

"Yes, Calista," her father said, heavily, "It is really happening."

He gave her a familiar, assessing look, and Calista was too tired to erect her mask of _I'm fine_ ; she knew he would see what she had glimpsed in the bathroom mirror a few moments ago, waxy skin and shadowed eyes, and perhaps, the edge of still-pink scars at her collar.

"Go to Boot's tomorrow," he said, making the choice for her, and they both pretended not to notice the small crack in his voice, "You might as well tell him what the Headmaster is going to tell everyone, anyway. You might as well tell him the truth."

"All of it?" How _could_ she? How could she possibly explain the agony of a week of waiting, of watching the clock, of having her heart torn out through the back of her mind?

"I suppose that depends," Severus said, at length, "On how far he's progressed, during your Occlumency lessons."

She was silent. She recalled what he had said, almost half a year ago, on the subject.

 _I stand by my decision to teach that boy Occlumency, if you will not. He is too close to you, I think, for us to neglect it much longer._

She had done worse than neglect it; she had refused, coldly, each time Gerald brought it up, until he'd finally ceased asking. She had increasingly employed her superior skill in the art against him, deflecting his insistence that something was wrong, and going through the motions of affection with a calculated detachment and just enough manufactured warmth to keep him from pressing her, from thoroughly understanding that he was right, that whatever she was could not possibly be described as _fine_.

"You have not been instructing him, despite my warning," Severus observed, and suddenly his disapproval was a third entity in the quiet corridor, staring her down.

She recalled Gerald's letters, the ache of how badly she'd _wanted_ to summon him to the castle during the past wretched week, to let herself feel true warmth from him, without the interference of the chill she'd drawn around herself, these past six months, a cloak of distance; and she recalled the choice she'd made, in response to that desire.

"What if I don't want to tell him?" Calista asked, quietly. "What if I think it's better for him if he doesn't know?"

She expected a careful, measured response, or perhaps none at all; but instead, her father was looking at her as if she had blown up a cauldron; a nerve in his cheek twitched ominously.

"The Dark Lord is returned," he said, quite tersely, "It does no one any good to be ignorant to that fact."

An uncomfortable rush of shame flooded her face, and she covered it with a scowl.

"I didn't mean that part," she snapped, "I meant — I meant —" she floundered; what _did_ she mean, exactly?

"It's all real," she finally said, "And… and if he — if the Dark Lord — does decide that I'm _interesting_ ," her mouth twisted savagely around the word, "I don't want Gerald to be in danger because of me."

"The Dark Lord is returned," her father said again, just as tersely as he had before, " _Everyone_ is in danger."

Her stomach leapt again, and she was suddenly grateful that there was no longer anything in it.

"You know what I mean," she said, quietly.

Several expressions crossed her father's face in quick succession, none of which she dared to interpret.

"Yes, I do. And that is why I told you, months ago, to teach him, or to let me do it; now, since you have done neither, it will very soon be too late."

"Fine," Calista agreed quietly, bones aching under the weight of his gaze, "Then it's too late."

A familiar feeling settled in her gut; a wretched, twisted sort of self-righteousness; and she knew suddenly and utterly precisely what she was saying, what she had been edging towards, these last six months or more. The sharp, acrid burn crawled from her throat down into her heart, where it settled as a tiring, heavy ache.

"I wonder," her father asked, devastatingly soft, "Do you understand what you must do, if you can't or won't teach him — if it is indeed _'too late'_?"

"Yes; I have to stop telling him anything." Her throat tightened painfully. "I suppose it would be wisest not to talk to him at all, anymore."

"Yes, all of that would undoubtedly be wise; _after_ you've modified his memory, of course."

"After I've done _what?!_ " The words practically scraped out of her abused throat; but her father's steady stare, the grim set of his features, were utterly merciless.

"You want to protect him, yes?"

"Of course I do."

"Then teach him how to maintain control of his mind," her father snarled, "So that it does not _break_ in the event that the Dark Lord thinks to use him to bait you — such leverage is the only thing the Dark Lord understands about love, but he understands it devastatingly well."

Calista's mouth was dry, and her legs were beginning to fill with the same bitter ache that had thus far gripped her throat and her chest; she braced herself against the doorframe of the study, in case they decided to give out, after all.

"You just said — you said he doesn't want — you said I'm not 'interesting' yet…"

Her father's mouth twisted almost inhumanly before he replied. "Neither is Boot; but you do not need to be interesting to be used as bait; it would be foolish for us not to consider that the Dark Lord may eventually realise — if he doesn't already — that _you_ can be used to bait _me_ ; and if that does happen, the whole chain will crumble the moment that Boot does."

Her eyes blurred painfully, and now it seemed that every single part of her was burning with bile, or something like it. "I _know_ that," she forced the words out, hating the way they trembled, the sound of unshed tears in her voice, "And that's why I'm trying — I want to keep him _out_ of the chain, don't you see? And you're saying it's too late, that I can't — but if that's the case, then how is modifying his memory going to help him?"

"It isn't. It would only ensure that he is a fruitless link for the Dark Lord to break; but it would not stop him from being broken."

"Why are you telling me this, now?" she whispered, hopelessly, "Now that it's too late?"

There was a blur of darkness that she interpreted to be a movement; it was confirmed a moment later, when her father's hand settled on her shoulder, a reassuring feeling utterly at odds with the tone of his voice, the poison of his words.

"If you recall," her father said, very quietly, "It was you who declared that it was already too late; I only told you that it _would_ be, very soon; and perhaps my words seem harsh, but I need to be certain that you understand the urgency behind them."

She had to allow several moments for the burn in her eyes to fade, for her vision and her throat to clear sufficiently.

"I understand the urgency," she finally said, with grim resolve, "I understand exactly what I need to do."

"Calista…"

She heard the hitch of hesitation in her father's voice; she sensed an inkling of concern, but she did not want it, in that moment; if she were to keep her resolve, then his urgency was the only thing she was interested in.

"You're going to be late to the feast," she said, evenly, and she extracted her shoulder from his grip. "And I'd better call Gerald to let him know I'm coming."

He glanced at the wall clock, and then back at her. His mouth creased into a frown, but she was right; the feast was going to begin any moment.

"I'll return as quickly as I can," her father said, "We'll remove the anchor point — it will be good practise, for you — and we'll talk."

Calista nodded agreeably, knowing full well that she was only agreeing to the first part of his offer; it was exactly as she'd already told him. She understood what she had to do; there was no need to talk any further.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

" _Mon cœur,_ I'm so relieved to see you — you won't believe what I heard this morning; and I was so worried, even though —"

Gerald interrupted his embrace and his rush of words simultaneously, as Calista responded woodenly to both. His arms shifted up to her shoulders, brows coming down in concern.

"You're _not_ all right," he murmured, and Calista immediately felt the awful, burning sensation from the night before creeping back into her gut. "I should have known you were lying again, I _felt_ —"

"I'm fine." At the last minute, Calista reined her snarl and her scowl back, making her face and her voice as carefully neutral as possible. It wasn't his fault, what she had to do; and she suspected that what she would eventually have to tell him would hurt him, enough. There was no need to add to his misery.

Gerald lifted his hand from her shoulder, bringing it towards her face in a soft, familiar motion he had done hundreds of times; and she flinched, in the instant before his skin touched hers. He frowned, the pad of his thumb poised over her cheekbone, and the ache inside her intensified at the realisation that he'd been intending to wipe away a tear that she hadn't even realised she had shed.

"Please don't," she whispered, and she lifted her own hand, fingers carefully unhooking his other hand from her shoulder. She stepped back, until she felt the knob of his front door against the small of her back, and _that_ made her flinch, too, though she tried to hide it with a deliberate stumble.

"You're not," Gerald said, quietly, though he did not try to touch her again; did not try to close the physical distance between them. "I'm not certain if I've ever seen you _less_ 'fine' in all the time I've known you, except perhaps…" She saw his pulse jump, briefly, in his throat. "After the trial..."

 _After the trial._ The reminder of one of the reasons she was here, one of the potentially dangerous secrets he held, was enough for her to cling to, to pull herself up, at least mentally; she found that while she did not quite have enough resolve to step closer to him, or to straighten her shoulders, she _did_ have enough to draw a careful mask of near-blankness across her face. She allowed a small fraction of her exhaustion to show through, so that he might guess that was the reason for the rest of it.

"I'm knackered," she said, quietly, but _that_ made him step closer, again. She shook her head, very slightly, until he stepped back again, and then she shifted her gaze slightly to his left. She didn't want to meet his; didn't want to acknowledge the warmth, the caring concern; least of all, the flicker of uncertain fear, that told her perhaps he already _knew_ why she didn't want to be close to him —

"I went to pick Terry up from the train this morning," Gerald said, quietly and grimly into the space between them, "You're not going to believe what he told me; _I_ can't believe it; and yet, he wasn't deliberately lying, I'm certain he wasn't."

"What did Terry tell you?" Calista asked neutrally, eyes still fixed on the bookshelves behind him.

"He told me — he said that Professor Dumbledore told the students at the feast last night that — that —"

Gerald's breath hitched audibly, and she could see his shoulders stiffen, while he forced himself to go on.

"He said that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has returned," he finished, quietly; and again, as if he simply could not help himself, he stepped towards her. She side-stepped him neatly, but even the faint brush of his fingers against her shoulder made her ache for things she could not accept, could not encourage.

"It's true," Calista said, softly, and now she had to make herself look at him; it wasn't the sort of news that seemed all right to give, otherwise. "He's —" she swallowed the threatening burn in her throat, "He's back."

She saw Gerald shiver; saw the uncertainty in his eyes fade, and the fear increase.

"That's right; you were at Hogwarts. You must have heard the speech, too."

"No, I didn't. I —" She frowned. Would he be cross, if she admitted she'd been on the fire with _him_ , while that speech was being given? Would he demand to know why she hadn't told him, then, and would he believe her if she told him that she had wanted _just one more_ conversation with him, before any of what she'd come here to tell him had built an impenetrable wall between them?

"I already knew," she told him; after all, _this_ was the one part she'd been sanctioned to tell him, and perhaps even a partial truth would be a cooling salve against the incessant, sour ache in her mouth. "I knew it the night that I went to Hogwarts, to tell my father about — to tell him what I'd remembered."

"You knew that He-Who —" Gerald's brow furrowed, "You knew he was back, a _week_ ago, on the night of the third task?" His voice cracked, and rose. "You — you knew when I called you, when I felt —"

"No," she interrupted fiercely, because she couldn't stand the way he was looking at her now, "I didn't know _then_. All I knew _then_ was that I'd remembered who Moody reminded me of, and —"

She stopped, realising that he probably didn't even know that Moody had been an imposter, even though she had always been permitted to tell him this part. She hadn't told him anything at all, other than that she was _fine._ The burn of that constant lie, and the weight of everything that was still untold were both suddenly unbearable.

"I'm sorry, I can't — do you have any coffee, or — anything, I just can't —"

Her fingers were aching for the curved warmth of a mug, but the source of warmth he offered her was quite different; his hands took hers up before she could protest, and even that small contact was so heartbreakingly _normal_ after the week she'd had that she could no longer bring herself to summon the resolve to resist.

"Your hands are freezing," Gerald said in a quietly scolding tone, as if it were something she could help; and but it seemed to her, then that it wasn't _just_ her hands. She suppressed a shiver while he led her, rather more firmly than she'd expected, into his kitchen. He shifted one hand to her shoulder again, then, and this time she did not flinch; she let him push her gently into a wooden chair.

"I didn't know, when you called me, that the D — that You-Know-Who was coming back," she said to his back, while he removed something from fridge and muttered a warming spell. "I just — I had the dream again, the one I told you about, and there was another part to it that time, something I had to tell my father about. I found out when I got to Hogwarts, that night."

He didn't respond, at least not right away. She caught a whiff of something that was a little bit like coffee, if it had been left out for a month, and perhaps trampled by a herd of thestrals for good measure. After a few moments, he finally turned; she didn't want to interpret the look in his eyes, so she looked at the plate and mug he set in front of her, instead.

The plate contained some sort of casserole, and even after being reheated, it smelled unbelievably appetising; still, her stomach rolled in protest. The mug of dark not-coffee that he'd set beside it only sharpened the ache.

"What happened that night?" Gerald asked quietly, and she realised that he hadn't retreated, after offering her the reheated food and whatever was in the mug. His body effectively blocked her only exit avenue, unless she planned on climbing onto the table and leaping over the half-wall into his living room.

"They… they cancelled the tournament, partway through the last task," Calista said. She took a bite of the casserole, for the sole purpose of her buying herself a few more seconds to decide how to answer, how much to tell him, but the morsel stuck in her throat, prompting her to reach for the steaming mug; she took a long draw of the liquid, and felt her nose wrinkle at the same moment that the bit of casserole dropped into her stomach like a stone. "Erm — is this supposed to be coffee, or mud?"

"It's instant," Gerald said, and he leaned closer, settling his fingers on her shoulder again. "Calista, what happened to _you_ that night?"

"Nothing," she said; it was the familiar warmth of his hand, pressing against her shoulder, that decided her. It would be easier, this way; if he did not know about any of the horrors of the past week, then he would not feel the need to comfort her, and she would not need to convince herself all over again to do what she'd already decided to do.

"Nothing?" Gerald echoed, and she nodded, meeting his gaze even though she didn't want to, selling the lie with her face as much as with her words.

"I see," he finally said, and, mercifully, his fingers lifted from her shoulder. He started to turn away, and Calista exhaled, and wrapped her fingers around the mug; it might not taste like coffee, but it still _felt_ the right way, in her hands.

"I suppose," Gerald said, turning back to her, and his voice cracked, again. "That 'nothing' happened the day _after_ that, either?"

She blinked. "I… suppose so. I don't remember anything from that day."

 _Nothing besides hearing my father scream, inside my head_ , she added silently, _And spending the better part of the day freeing the real Mad-Eye from his own trunk._

"And it was 'nothing' again, the day before yesterday, was it?"

"What are you talking about?" she snarled, and suddenly it was as if the floor beneath her was opening up; _the day before yesterday_ ; but no, that awful day of horror and waiting and pain had been longer ago than that, hadn't it?

"I _felt_ you," Gerald said, and his words seemed to shiver with feeling, "Or I heard you — or I don't know _what_ exactly to call it, but I _knew_ something awful was happening — I knew you were afraid, or hurt or — or —" He shuddered, and made a small sound; then he sucked in a breath, and that seemed to steady him slightly. "Calista, tell me the truth. Please."

"Fuck," she whispered, without quite meaning to say it aloud, and then: " _Fuck._ It's — Merlin's blood, what the hell is wrong with me, why didn't I ever realise — the anchor point, Gerald."

It was his turn to blink, puzzled. "What?"

Why hadn't she realised before? It wasn't the first time he'd said something similar, but —

 _But before, I didn't know what it felt like_ , she realised, _To have an anchor point in your mind, from someone you actually care about._

She had only known, before this past week, what it felt like to have her mother's sinister, lingering presence; had only known what it was to be haunted, and hunted, through such a connection, and so she had not realised what she had left behind.

"The anchor point," she said, grimly, "I — I placed one in your mind, during the trial, so I could help you, remember?"

"Of course I do," he said, and though his brow furrowed, his tone did not quite soften. "But then you — you fainted, and the connection broke, and I assumed… wouldn't the anchor have broken, too?"

"No," she said, "It has to be deliberately removed, by a legilimens that knows it's there. Until it is, you'll — you would have sensed whenever I felt a particularly strong burst of emotion, especially…"

She recalled her father's words, after placing his own anchor point, what he'd warned her would happen: _You will feel my fear, like an alarm in your mind. You may even sense pain._ How many times had she felt both of those things, since she had placed the anchor…? Merlin, it was the beginning of July, and Gerald had evidently been feeling these powerful rings of emotion from her since _October_.

She shook her head, against the crushing realisation of her own idiotic negligence, against the persistent ache of her insides, against the weight of exhaustion that still pressed on her, from what felt like all sides.

"Gerald, I'm so sorry, I must have completely forgotten about it, with… with everything else that happened. I can't believe I did, but — I must have."

She expected him to be frightened, or perhaps even angry, at the realisation; she braced herself, thinking grimly that at least it would make it easier to push him away, once she'd done what she had to do.

She was not prepared for what he did say; she was not prepared for the quiet, hollow words that hit her like a curse, and so she flinched.

"So you've lied to me," he said, "Every single time since October that I _knew_ something was wrong, and you told me you were fine."

 _Yes._ "No," she made herself say, and it was impossible not to be perversely proud of the way her words came out; mostly even, with the slight lilt of contrition; the intentional gravity of sincerity. "I never lied. I _am_ fine, or at least I was, until my father told me that the Dark Lord had returned; and of _course_ I'm terrified of that — aren't you?"

"Of course I am," Gerald echoed, and she could hear the flicker of uncertainty as he added: "But that wasn't the only time — Calista, I felt like you were hurt, or afraid, _so many times_."

"I'm sorry," she said, and she did not have to falsify the bitter shame that rolled through her blood, though once again, she was lying about the _reason_ for it. "I — it must have been my nightmares you were sensing, I —" Her throat pulsed so viciously now with the ache of her lies that it felt like she was swallowing her teeth, but she pressed on. "I just — I was embarrassed, I didn't want to admit I was having them so often…"

He frowned. She could see him considering her words. "That's why you don't like to stay the night, isn't it?"

"Yes."

At last, he softened; but her relief was short-lived, because in the space of a breath, he had crossed over to her chair again, and the press of his palm on her shoulder made her want to cry, suddenly, more than anything else had in the last twenty-four hours; maybe since October.

" _Mon c—"_ he started to say, but she could already feel dangerous things inside, things that made her afraid that she could not do what she _had_ to, and so she cut him off.

"The anchor point," she said, and the steadiness of her voice was such a mad juxtaposition to the way she felt inside that for an instant, her tired mind thought wildly that someone else must be speaking, "I have to remove it."

"Now?"

"The… the sooner, the better," she agreed, pretending not to register the incredulity in his voice, "I mean — we don't want to forget for another nine or ten months, do we?"

Gerald's mouth curled thoughtfully, and his free hand came to rest on her other shoulder. She felt a sudden spark of apprehension, though she wasn't quite certain why; but then, her entire life had become a trigger for apprehension, of late, hadn't it?

"Is it difficult to remove?" he asked, "Will it take a lot of effort?"

She had only ever removed anchor point from her _own_ mind, and she'd been fighting against the will of her mother, who had obviously wanted it to stay. She did know that the longer an anchor had been in place, the more difficult it was to remove; but how much effort _was_ it from the other side? She thought back to the night before; to her father's wan, grey face.

How much of that had been from the effort of removing the anchor, and how much of it had been simply from living through a series of agonising days, days so dark that even the ghost of them in the back of her mind had made _her_ into the aching, shivering wreck she felt like inside?

"I don't know," she answered, honestly, for once. ""It could be minutes, or it might be hours. It would be easier if— if you knew how to help, but… forget hours, it would probably take _months_ for me to teach you enough to do it."

"And you won't." There was a flicker of an edge, in his words, and she hadn't meant to say anything about why she'd come just yet; she'd wanted some measure of food in her stomach and some semblance of sleep behind her, but there was no reason to believe her wretched, exhausted body would embrace the latter any more than it had the former, and he was giving her a perfect opening.

"Actually, I will," she said, lifting her gaze to his; _Merlin,_ it hurt, to look at him, because she _wanted_ to press her head against him, to feel his arms come around her precisely as they had in that linked memory that she'd used to place the anchor in the first place; she wanted him to tell her _I love you_ , and to ease the softness of his mouth over her temple, and around the ridge of her ear, until she felt some echo of the _normal_ she'd been craving for what felt like eternity; but all of that would be cruel, now, for both of them.

Surprise widened his eyes, brows arching over the rim of his spectacles. "Erm — you _will_?"

"Yes," she said, and she took advantage of his surprise to slip her shoulder free, again, of his grasp, despite the sudden chill it gave her. "I'm going to teach you Occlumency, if you still want me to. I'll stay here this week, of course, like I told you last night; I think if we practise a lot, you'll be able to maintain two layers of defence, very soon. And after that… I'll come over, as often as you like, until…"

 _Until I think you're safe enough, or until I can't stand seeing you and knowing it might be the last time_.

"Until you feel confident," she said, instead.

"I don't understand," Gerald said, bewildered, "You _always_ refused, before, every time I asked. Why have you suddenly changed your mind so fully that you'll be coming over every day to teach me?"

That, at least, was one question that she could afford to answer truthfully.

"The D — You-Know-Who is back. Nothing's the same, now, as it was."

They both shivered; and then he nodded, and suddenly his arms were around her, even though she'd resolved not to let them end up that way.

"All right," Gerald said, words vibrating at her ear, "We'll start the lessons tomorrow, then; and we'll address the anchor point and talk about what's coming. But for now —"

"I have to remove the anchor point today," she said, even as she was lifted gently out of the chair he'd placed her in; he shifted his grip, placing an arm at her waist, and taking up her hand again.

"Calista, your hands are freezing and you've been shivering for the last hour; Beyond that, I can see that Yellow must have scratched you up —" she suppressed an enormous wave of guilt as his eyes swept over the neckline of her top, "And thanks to the anchor point, I know full well that you've been sleeping terribly, if at all, for days."

"But —"

"You're going to bed," he said, rather as she had heard him tell more than one student out past curfew during his tenure as Head Boy, "And when you wake up, you're going to eat a proper meal, and _then_ we can move on to all the rest of it."

"At least let me try —"

"I absolutely will _not_ allow you to attempt a potentially draining feat of legilimency in the state you're currently in — which, incidentally, becauseof the anchor point, I know for a certainty is _not_ fine. We'll talk about it tomorrow, _mon colibri_."

He was right, she realised, as he led her through the living room and into the bedroom, still brightly lit from the evening sun. She hadn't caught more than a few hours' sleep at a time in days; exhausted didn't even begin to cover the strange, heavy-and-light trembling feeling inside her. She had no idea how difficult removing the anchor point would prove to be; and June or no, she _was_ freezing, at least until he plucked a quilt off his bed and wrapped it around her shoulders.

"I'll bring your trunk in," Gerald said, glancing out towards the living room where she'd left it earlier, "Unless you're comfortable with me opening it to —"

She was already lying down, unable to resist the warmth and softness of the bed, the glow of sunlight that just touched the edges of it from the balcony window at the far end of the room. She saw a soft, affectionate sort of smile flicker over his features, momentarily overtaking the weariness, the horror, of what Terry had told him and what she had grimly confirmed.

"I'll bring you some pajamas," he amended, just before the door eased shut behind him; for a moment, her ears stayed perked, expecting his return, but —

It took him an extraordinarily long time to find one of her nightdresses, or else it took her an extraordinarily _short_ time to fall asleep; and for once, it was dreamless.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

Gerald lifted the lid on Calista's yellow trunk. The top of it was jammed with books, which didn't surprise him in the least; despite the yawing, gaping pit that had taken residency in his stomach the moment Terry had told him about Professor Dumbledore's speech, he managed a small, fond sort of smile at the sheer number of books she'd crammed into the thing.

He reflected with the first spark of humour he'd felt all day that she must have an extraordinarily strong gift for Hover Charms, in addition to her Freezing Charm, in order to have gotten the heavy trunk all the way up to his third floor flat without help.

Finally, about halfway down, he hit fabric; he sifted through a silky, yellow length of fabric that he thought he recognised as a dress he'd seen her wear, and hurriedly cast aside a much smaller, lacier scrap of fabric that he _definitely_ remembered seeing her wear, though not for very long— ah, there. He saw a soft-looking, off-white edge that looked promising, and pulled it free.

His first thought was that he had made a mistake; he'd meant to grab a nightdress, and had ended up with — with —

His stomach heaved so forcefully that it _hurt_ , and his heart all but stopped; and then, it thudded and snagged like a struggling bird against his rib cage, as he realised what he was looking at.

The garment in his hands _was_ one of Calista's nightdresses, and it _had_ been white, before it had become utterly covered with blood.

 _It's dye_ , his brain declared, but he knew instantly that it wasn't; and then, only slightly more plausible and discounted just as quickly: _It's from a spilled potion, or an animal, or —_

The sunlight streaming through the West window was soft and light, but it illuminated with an unbearable harshness the source of all the bloodstains on her nightdress: the six or eight diagonal slashes of darker, deeper blood on the untorn fabric. There were only a handful of curses he knew of that could make marks anything like what he was seeing on the nightdress, what his _mind_ was seeing on Calista's body, and none of them were anything close to 'nothing'.

A series of memories assaulted him, seemingly out of nowhere. He saw the stark lines of runes, stacks of mysterious scrolls, the curl of his own nearly bloodless fingers around a quill as he painstakingly translated one dark missive after another through endless night after endless night.

Then, as now, the truth had lined up in front of his eyes; it had presented itself in visions of blood and pain, in a pervading sense of _not right_ , and he had been so convinced of the unthinkable that he'd risked his job to warn Crouch's office; but then Chadwick had told him, calmly and reasonably, that he was wrong, that he'd misinterpreted, and he'd believed his cousin, partly because he loved him, and partly because he didn't want to believe the unthinkable.

The problem with that, he now saw with devastating clarity, was that the unthinkable had indeed come to pass; it was written in the awed horror in his little brother's face, when he'd relayed the words of Dumbledore's end-of-year address, and it was illustrated in the shadows underneath Calista's eyes when she'd quietly confirmed: _He's back._

An eerily similar pattern was forming now, in his mind, though the clues were different; the vicious, violent pattern of blood on Calista's nightdress, and the way one of the slashes ended just at the edge of the collar; the angry pink line he had glimpsed at the base of her neck, just where that slash would have ended; the agonising pulses of fear and pain at the back of his mind, and Calista's repeated chorus of _I'm fine, it's nothing._

How many times had she looked him straight in the eyes and lied? How many nights had he lain awake, a silent sentry to the litany of terror ringing through the back of his mind; and how many of _those_ nights would he have found her in danger or in pain, if he'd ignored her protests, her father's threats, and gone to her?

 _I'm fine_ ; she said it all the time; and if he'd never quite believed her, he reluctantly accepted her repeated platitudes because she presented them reasonably and logically; and of course, because he loved her, and because… well, because he didn't want to believe the unthinkable.

 _I've never lied_ , she'd said, only an hour ago, and there had been nothing in her face, her eyes, her voice that betrayed her. _I am fine; it must have been my nightmares you were sensing_.

"Let's verify that," Gerald muttered quietly, now. "Let's see just how long ago 'nothing' happened to you."

Clenching his jaw against the rolling in his stomach, Gerald carried the bloodied nightdress to the kitchen, and spread it carefully over the table.

He had researched blood magic, after Calista had told him that it had once been employed against her as a small child. He had wanted to understand, and he had admittedly been naïve enough and cocky enough to hope that he could uncover something she hadn't, some magical means of removing the scars that fueled so much of her undeserved self-loathing; and of course there was no such cure, but that didn't mean that his research had been utterly fruitless.

He had learned, for instance, that curses that inflicted bloodshed — particularly if they were Dark spells — would often leave behind some faint magical signature, though it would fade with time.

He had also learned that if a particular, complex series of spells were cast immediately following bloodshed that the events leading up to it could be preserved for hours, even days, allowing a variant of the _priori incantatem_ spell to be performed, to determine precisely how the blood had been spilled; but since it was incredibly doubtful that anyone had done that to Calista's nightdress, he would have to resort to some of the other spells he'd learned, and hope that not _too_ much time had passed, to glean as much as he could.

" _Sanguisaetas nunc reditio_ ," he tapped his wand to the most vivid of the slashes, and drew the tip of his wand against it in a quick, counter-clockwise circle. Nothing happened; but of course, the stains had to be more than an hour old, since she had been _here_ an hour ago. He repeated the spell, adding an additional twist around of his wand each time; at each interval of twelve hours, he substituted the circular motions for an east-west arc, indicating the passage of one day, hour to hour.

When he reached thirty-six hours back, he realised he was holding his breath; that, after all, was the last time that he had felt the agonising urgency of alarm in the back of his mind — but the nightdress told him nothing.

He went on and on, until he lost certainty that he was following the procedure correctly; and _then_ , just when he'd been close to giving up:

" _Sanguisaetas nunc reditio_ ," his wand twirled, drawing a series of arcs and loops over the fabric; and then there was a flash of light, and the stain directly beneath his wand shifted, shining briefly into liquid; rust turned to scarlet, and the tang of copper assaulted his nose.

It was only a moment, and then the fabric dried up again, the colour oxidised. He repeated the motion again, to be absolutely certain, and when he got the same result again, he snatched a sheet of parchment out of one of his kitchen drawers, and wrote down the pattern that had finally activated the dormant blood magic in the garment.

" _Accio calendar_ ," he said, and as the calendar flew across the room into his fingers, he calculated the hours that were represented in the symbols he'd written down, matching up each arc, sliding his finger backwards along the line of days, until his finger stopped at the end of the pattern; and suddenly, the struggling bird was back, beating against the inside of ribs, sinking its talons firmly into his heart.

June twenty-fourth. The Dark magic that had stained Calista's nightdress with a terrifying amount of blood had been performed on the evening of June twenty-fourth; the night of the third task; the night that he had sensed her fear so acutely that he had called her on the fire, only to be firmly shut out. In fact, by the calculation of his spell, it had happened within the hour that he had spoken to her; and another memory, this one from only hours ago, cut across the forefront of his mind:

 _I knew about it the night I went back to Hogwarts to tell my father what I'd remembered,_ Calista had told him, of Lord Voldemort's return, and: _They cancelled the tournament, partway through the last task._

She had managed not tell him precisely _how_ she'd found out that Lord Voldemort was back, and now his mind could not help but draw the most horrifying conclusion imaginable.

Once, he might have been able to convince himself that he was wrong; once, he would have believed that Calista would not, _could not_ lie to him about something so critical, so terrible; but the stained cloth on the table was a cruel counterpoint.

When was the last time that she had actually told him the _truth_? He had nothing to go on but shadowed eyes and chill fingers and the insistent, flickering pulse of fear in the back of his mind, and even with all of that, she had still locked her eyes on his and told him, utterly evenly: _I'm fine. Nothing happened_ , and for most of a year, he'd ignored everything inside him that told him it wasn't true, hadn't considered that this was the same person who had run off in the middle of the night to face a werewolf and a horde of dementors with little more than a _bloody Freezing Charm_ , and had told no one where she was going.

Panic had threatened to drown him, in the moment that he'd first laid eyes on the telltale nightdress, but busying himself with investigating it had steadied his hands and his heart; and now that a series of frightening and disheartening questions were occurring to him, he knew that he had to counter his rising anxiety with the two things that never failed to rescue him from the clutches of fear: information, and action.

He cast a look towards the bedroom door, and he was sorely tempted to barge in, then, and confront Calista with what he knew; but his hands were trembling, and the wild bird in his chest was threatening to take flight, and it was almost a certainty that he would say a great many regrettable things, if he saw her now. It would be better if he could think, first, and plan.

He set a couple of charms on the door, one that would soften any sound from the rest of the flat from breaching it, and a second one that would alert him with a soft chime if she opened it. He set the latter one grimly, forcing himself to acknowledge the very real possibility that she would try to slip out, in the middle of the night.

He was only slightly reassured by the reminder, quite literally in the back of his mind, that he had a small amount of leverage to keep her here.

It was a long night; as the hours passed and the shadows outside first deepened and then softened, Gerald divided his time between stacks of books and papers, and the simmering heat of a cauldron that had replaced the nightdress on the table. By the time that dawn's fingers began to tap at the living room window, his shoulders ached and his brow was slick with sweat; but he felt satisfied that he had understood enough of the pattern, this time, to act.

He knew she would argue reasonably and logically; and then, when that failed, she would argue unreasonably and viciously. He was not looking forward to that, but he was prepared for it, prepared to press doggedly on, this time, as he had not before: because he loved her, and because he finally realised that he had been staring into the face of the unthinkable all along.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)**

It was full daylight when Calista woke, alone in Gerald's single bed. She couldn't remember him coming in, but she suspected she'd been so soundly asleep that a literal hippogriff could have crawled into bed beside her, and she'd have been none the wiser; the thought gave her a small flicker of amusement, and she almost considered checking the bed for feathers.

The ghost of her smile died on her face, almost as soon as it had formed, as she remembered why she was here, what she had to do.

The anchor point, that was going to have to be first; and once it was gone, she'd begin teaching him how to build a proper second wall, in his mind. And then…

She had intended on teaching him as much as she reasonably could, and _then_ breaking the news, but it was plain to her now that she did not have the willpower to follow that plan. All it had taken was a brief moment of warmth, his arms around her, his mouth on her ear, and she had ached so thoroughly to hug him, to kiss him, to tell him everything — in short, to ensure that he _would_ become a tool for the Dark Lord to ensnare her with.

 _I'll remove the anchor point now, first thing,_ she told herself, and then… _And then, somehow, I have to find a way to tell him that the only reason I'm here is to teach him Occlumency._

What would she give him, for a reason, when she told him she was breaking things off? If she told him the truth, she thought he might not listen; that he might insist on helping her face whatever was coming next, just as she'd helped him face his father — but of course, it wasn't the same thing _at all_ ; and it was her Patronus, of all things, that reminded her why she had to do this cleanly, and utterly, and _now_ , before she lost her dwindling resolve.

There was no use dwelling, now; she would have to hope that the right words would come to her, once the anchor point was taken care of. She realised bitterly that she could tell him anything she wanted to; he would have no way, once the anchor was removed, of seeing through her.

Two things assaulted her the moment she opened the bedroom door; the telltale chime of a perimeter alert spell, and a powerful mixture of scents; it was something delicious mingled with something earthy and clean; it was rather as if someone had mixed the scent of Gerald's cooking with the scent of Gerald _himself._

"Good morning," Gerald said, from the kitchen, calling over the half-wall, "You have impeccable timing; I'm almost finished cooking breakfast."

"I'm not hungry," she said, her first lie of the morning, "I have to — we should work on that anchor point, now. And what was the alert spell for, by the way?"

He set a pair of heaping omelettes down on the kitchen table. "As it happens, I don't believe you," he said, a bit more sharply than she'd expected, "So we'll discuss the anchor point after we've eaten."

He laid two mugs on the table next; one filled with a fragrant tea, and the other with more of the mud-coffee he'd had on offer the day before. If she hadn't felt so wretched, she might have sourly considered breaking up with him on the grounds of foisting _that_ off on her, alone.

It seemed disingenuous, somehow, to allow him to feed her, when she knew what was coming, and he didn't; but if she _didn't_ eat, he'd almost certainly be suspicious, and he might try to delay the removal of the anchor point, again. Besides, she had a sinking, guilt-ridden feeling that she was going to need the fortification.

She directed her attention to the omelette, primarily so she could avoid looking at _him_ ; but the smell of the wretched not-coffee was turning her stomach, and there was something _else_ pulling at her nose, some other scent that belonged with him, but did not belong with eggs…

"Why do I smell dittany?" she asked, as the realisation hit her, and when she lifted her gaze, she could see that Gerald's attention was fixed on her, rather than on his hardly-touched plate of eggs.

"I made a concentrated healing paste last night," Gerald told her, and his eyes swept pointedly to her collarbone; she flushed, and scowled, dropping her fork to pull the neckline of her shirt up.

"Why? This is nothing. Like you said, I just picked Yellow up too quickly, and —"

"That isn't true," Gerald said, evenly and quietly, "Yellow didn't do that to you."

"What? Of course he did."

"If that's the case," Gerald said, and though his tone was light, she could hear a strained tightness hovering just beneath his words, "Then perhaps I should owl the _Daily Prophet_ ; I imagine a cat that can cast Dark magic would make the front page."

" _Excuse me?_ "

"I found your nightdress," Gerald said, and his voice cracked just slightly. "The one you were wearing, on the night that you said you went to Hogwarts and found out You-Know-Who had returned."

 _Fuck._ Too late, Calista remembered that she had thrown all of her things haphazardly into her trunk, the morning before, everything that she'd had at Hogwarts.

"At least I know it wasn't a werewolf that attacked you, this time," Gerald went on, and aside from that first crack of emotion, his voice was almost conversational, "The — the wounds were too symmetrical for that."

"What do you want, Gerald?"

"Isn't it obvious? I want you to tell me the _truth._ " He frowned, pushing his untouched mug of tea aside, and rising from his seat.

"Actually," he clarified, "To be perfectly honest, I _want_ you to stop putting yourself in dangerous situations, but I'm not certain you're capable of keeping that promise, so I'll settle for knowing about it _before_ I hear you screaming in the back of my mind."

"I didn't go to Hogwarts _expecting_ a duel, you know," she said, rising too, "I went to talk to my father, because I had that damn dream again, about Moody, only _this_ time I remembered that his voice, the way he said my name, reminded me of someone."

"Who?"

"Bartemius Crouch, Junior," she said; she was perversely satisfied when his expression flickered. _There_. Perhaps if she reminded him exactly who she was — exactly the sorts of people she had been exposed to, he would take the rest of this, their inevitable parting of ways, with less resistance. "He came to our house, when I was small, to talk to my mother, and he saw me; he said my name, and I finally remembered that Moody said it exactly the same way, when I duelled him outside my father's office."

"How?" Gerald asked, brow furrowed, "Bartemius Crouch died in custody while he was in Azkaban. I'm certain I read that, when I was —" he shook his head slightly, and with a little more force: "I'm certain I read that."

"Yes, well," Calista said, "The Dark Lord's been back for over a week and the _Daily Prophet_ hasn't printed one word about it. It would appear that they get things wrong, from time to time; and I'm telling you, they were wrong about _him_. I went to Hogwarts to warn my father, only I ran into Moody — Crouch — first. We duelled; I lost, to a bloody _Shield Charm_ , of all things. Crouch got away while my father was healing the —," she swallowed; her tone might have bordered on cavalier, but it wasn't what she _felt_ , reliving that terrifying night. "Healing what you saw the evidence of, and he took Harry Potter with him."

She explained the rest of it quickly; how her father and Dumbledore had pressed her for anything else she could remember. There were gaps, still, in her memory from that night; moments when she'd been too unsteady to concentrate on anything besides keeping her feet, and she stumbled through those parts of the story, minimising the effects of the duel; and of course, she did not tell him about the sticky, foggy remnants of the Imperius Curse, the dark, sickeningly familiar lines on her father's forearm; of course she did not tell him about the way she had clung helplessly to her father, digging her nails in when Dumbledore had asked him to go find Potter.

"Potter made it back, somehow," she finished, "He got away; and he told us — he said 'He's back'." She shivered, recalling the poor boy's pale, stricken face; the blood that was caked on his arm, splattered on his face. He was Draco's age, and he had faced the Dark Lord; he had not even looked, to Calista, like he should have been able to face a grindylow.

"All right," Gerald finally said, and she noticed that during her retelling, he had slowly shifted his position, and he now blocked her exit from the kitchen, just as he had the night before. "That's one of the times, then, that I heard you. What about the rest of them? What about two days ago?"

She knew instantly what he had sensed, that day; it had been one of the worst days of her life. It turned her stomach into a rock to think that he had been standing his own sentry, that same day; feeling her anguish, just as she had felt her father's; and it reminded her, painfully, of exactly why this could not continue.

"I told you, I've been having nightmares," she said, sliding her gaze away from him. "But you won't feel it anymore, once I remove the anchor point. We should… we should do it, now."

Gerald's frown deepened, and she felt a stab of guilt; and then, he exhaled, and his expression shifted, again, hardening.

"This wasn't my first choice," he said, and suddenly, inexplicably, his Head Boy voice was back. "If you'll recall, I asked you to tell me the truth; but it's plain that you won't do so reliably, and since I have no other way of knowing when you're in danger — I'm going to keep it."

Calista blinked. "You're going to — what? Keep _what_?"

"The anchor point," he said, and though it seemed that he couldn't possibly have meant anything else, the words still hit her, like a Blasting Curse, in the gut. "I did a lot of research last night, and it seems that keeping it won't do any harm beyond making it more difficult to remove, later; furthermore, it seems that with enough concentration and practise, I should be able to learn to trace the call back to you; I should be able to determine, within a reasonable proximity, where you are, so I can come to you."

" _What?_ " The word tore out of her throat, savage and clawed. "You — you will do no such thing!" Her blood was on fire; but it was not the heat of rage, that pressed at her skin; it was sharp, cutting terror. "What — what books did you even _find_ that in?"

He was remarkably calm, in the face of her explosion, and that sparked an insistent suspicion in the back of her mind that he had possibly expected the conversation to go this way; and that _did_ allow a lick of anger to flicker through her chest.

"I'm afraid I had to borrow a few of your books," Gerald said, and it was maddening how firmly and how _matter-of-factly_ he stood there, blocking her exit, "But if it's any consolation, I promise I was very careful with the spines."

 _What the hell?_ Something frothed in her gut, and for a moment, she was afraid she was going to vomit, in the middle of his kitchen — but when her mouth opened, all that bubbled out was an inexplicable, hysterical bubble of _laughter_.

"Careful with the —" _Merlin, she was losing it._ "No," she said, shaking her head, "Gerald, you can't do this. I… I know you think you're doing the right thing, but you're wrong. You've got to let me remove it."

"I will," he said, quite sincerely; but her relief was short-lived. "As soon as I believe that you'll tell me when you're going to do something dangerous. Perhaps I'll have learned enough to help, by then, if you really were sincere in your offer to teach me Occlumency."

"I —" _Fuck_. He _couldn't_ do this, he couldn't refuse to let her remove the anchor; and if he really intended to use the connection it gave him to her mind to _track her down_ , then the urgency to be rid of it was suddenly tenfold.

"You can't actually stop me," she said, quietly, hating herself utterly for this particular truth. "I'm strong enough to reach it, whether you want me to or not; I _will_ remove it."

His throat jumped, but his expression remained immovable. "I do realise that," he said, "And I — I suppose I _can't_ stop you, any more than I've ever been able to stop you running off to face hordes of dementors without the ability to summon a Patronus, or extending yourself beyond reasonable limits, or — or duelling escaped Death Eaters; but you did promise me once that you would not invade my mind against my will. We were… we were discussing memory modification, then —"

Another searing bolt of guilt shot through her.

"But I do see this as being rather the same thing, in the end."

"How is it the same?" she challenged, voice thick with emotion, "This is something — it doesn't belong to you. This is part of _me_ , a piece of my mind, that you won't let me take back from yours."

"I told you, I read some of your books," Gerald said, softly, "It might be part of you, but it's _also_ part of me; the memory it's anchored to belongs to both of us. And I — I don't believe you're really the sort of person that would break into my mind and take it, by force — but if I'm wrong, if you are…"

 _Damn it._ Of course she was not; of course she _could not_.

"I want you to understand that I'm going to fight you, as hard as I can," he finished, "Because I _love_ you, and that doesn't just mean — it's not just poems, and flowers, and sex. It means that I intend to be there, through _all_ of your nightmares, waking or not."

Her eyes blurred, and her heart stung; because if there was anything she had learned, over the last few days, it was that she _wanted_ this, wanted him; she wanted to believe, more than anything, that she was what he had said, the sort of girl that deserved the kind of love he was offering; but all she could hear was the echo of her father's words:

 _Such leverage is the only thing the Dark Lord understands about love, but he understands it devastatingly well._

She felt the sudden warmth of his palm, against her shoulder, and _then_ , the brush of his thumb, heartbreakingly soft, just under her eye.

" _Mon c_ —" Gerald started, but Calista sucked in a massive, shaking breath, and wrenched her shoulder away from him, and stepped back, throat aching with the most difficult lie she thought she might ever tell:

"I don't want that, anymore," she said, heavily. "I don't want you, anymore."

She made herself look at him, braced herself for the inevitably wounded look to cross his feature; and something did flicker across his features, but she was too weary and too full of self-loathing to interpret it.

"All right," he said, very softly; several beats of silence stretched between then, and each one felt like the weight of a hippogriff landing on her chest.

At long last, he nodded, and stepped forward, and she thought wildly that he was going to try to touch her again, despite what she'd just said, despite what he'd evidently agreed to, but he strode past her, instead, and she heard a soft scraping sound as he drew something across the surface of the kitchen counter.

"You'd better apply this sooner, rather than later," he said, holding something out to her; it was a glass jar, and it smelled strongly of dittany, and _he_ smelled strongly of parchment, and oh, Merlin, this was a thousand times more painful that she'd even imagined.

"I —" _lied; I love you._ She shook her head. "I'll apply it later," she said, forcing the words past the lump in her throat, "I want to remove the anchor point, first. And then I… I should probably go."

She didn't know _where_ she'd go, since her father didn't want her to go home or to go to Malfoy Manor; but it was becoming painfully clear that she should not, _could not_ , stay here.

"I thought I was quite clear on that matter," Gerald said, "Unless you _are_ planning on forcing me to fight you?"

"What? But — but I just told you, I'm not — _we're_ not — I'm breaking up with you."

"Yes, I understood that; and you have my word that I won't offer you flowers, or poems, or sex unless you change your mind."

"You can't _do_ this. You have no idea — you don't understand what you'd be getting into — what are you even going to _do_ , if you think you hear me in your mind, and follow me somewhere? I've evidently already managed to draw Crouch's attention, and — and —"

She suppressed a cold shiver of fear, and pressed ruthlessly on.

"You think you'll fare better against — against Crouch, or — or the Dark Lord himself than _I_ will? Merlin's blood, Gerald, you're almost twenty years old, and you can't even see _thestrals_."

 _There_. It was savage, and it was cruel, but it was _true_. Perhaps now, he would understand why she was not at all the sort of girl he had thought she might be; perhaps now, he would realise why he was not at all equipped to face the same sorts of nightmares that she would inevitably have to, because of _who she was_ ; not just Bellatrix Lestrange's daughter, but _Severus Snape's_ daughter, and she couldn't even tell him why that, too, was dangerous, now.

He flinched, then, and Calista wondered bitterly if he could feel her pain, now, through the anchor point, because it was surely as fierce as it had ever been…

"No, I can't see them," Gerald admitted, bitterly. "Although I'm not certain what it is you're trying to prove by bringing that up — unless you want to be the reason I finally can, some day. Is that it? You want me to — to stay safely tucked away until you _do_ manage to get yourself killed, and then I'll finally have earned the right to be useful to you?"

Ah, so it was possible to hurt even more; and _damn it,_ the kitchen had gone all blurry again, and would she _ever_ have a day again that didn't make her eyes and her throat burn so incessantly?

"You just — you have no idea, Gerald, no idea at all…"

"I was the same age that you were, when You-Know-Who was in power the last time," he said, still bitter and still quiet, "And my mother is a Muggle. You think my father didn't _delight_ in telling me what might happen to her, if _I_ slipped up enough to give him a reason to bring the Death Eaters to our door? And then — and then when I was older, and I realised he'd never really had the power to do that, I met _you_ , and you had been through every horror I'd only imagined and then some, and I wanted to understand how to help you, and so when you told me who your mother was, I researched every last thing she'd done, to end up in Azkaban; and I researched Crouch and the other one, the other Lestrange, too, that were arrested with her; I _know_ all the depraved things they've done, even if I didn't see it firsthand."

"It isn't the same. Reading, and hearing; it isn't the same as facing them."

"No, I suppose it isn't," Gerald said, "But I _do_ know what I'm getting into; and the point isn't that I'd fare better than you, by the way, in a duel, it's that _both_ of us would fare better, together; the point is, that if I'd followed you to Hogwarts that night, you wouldn't have those new scars. You wouldn't have gotten hurt."

She choked on a half-snarl, half-sob. "You can't — you can't possibly know that."

"Actually, yes I can; I _do_ know that, because — because —" He exhaled, and his mouth pressed briefly into a line, and then:

"Hold still," he said, "I swear I'm not going to hurt you, but there's something I need to show you."

He shifted, and drew his wand with his free hand, the one that was not still clutching the jar of dittany.

"What are you doing?"

" _Protega Corporis_ ," Gerald said, pointing his wand at her, and a glittering, silvery light floated from his wand towards her; he shifted again, keeping his attention and his wand carefully trained, and flicked his wrist in a complicated motion. The silvery light moved and changed, and then it attached itself to her.

It was like a second skin, and it moved when she did; and then he cast a second spell, a brief, familiar flick of the wrist.

" _Locomotor Mortis_ ," he said, and she flinched, bracing herself for a fall — but the skin-shield around her flickered and darkened, and then it began to drift apart in wisps; but it didn't matter, it had blocked the spell.

Calista's heart rattled, as Gerald lowered his wand.

 _He did it_ , she thought, faintly awed, _He actually did it — he invented an Armour Charm._

"It still needs some work," he said, "It only lasts a few seconds, without being sustained; but I've tested it against at least thirty curses now, and it absorbs them all."

"That's _brilliant_. Why haven't you written to the Experimental Charms Committee about it? Why haven't you told _me_?"

"It still needs work," he said again, and then: "I _did_ tell you, dozens of times, that I was making progress. You never seemed very interested. Perhaps because it's not a thestral."

Another hurt pierced her heart, then; and whatever else it did to her, it was enough, finally to quell the last of her anger; it was enough to make her realise that Gerald was _still_ holding the jar of dittany, clenched between narrow, but capable, fingers.

"I'm sorry I said that," she managed; but that was as much as she could make herself say, in that moment.

"I'm not useless," Gerald said, quietly. "I'll be even _less_ useless if you'll actually keep your word and train me to be a better Occlumens."

"I don't think you're useless, Gerald. I never did; don't you understand? _The Dark Lord is back_ , and I need — I need you to be safe; I need to protect you."

He took a breath, and nodded. He slipped his wand back into his pocket, and then, tentatively, he reached for her hand. She let him take it, too weary and shell-shocked to resist; and despite everything she'd resolved, she ached for him to run his mouth over her fingers, to press his lips to her palm, and to undo every wretched thing she'd put between them.

He didn't do any of that. Instead, he gently uncurled her fingers, and then he pressed the jar of dittany into her palm, and closed her fingers around it.

"I'm perfectly willing to let you do that," Gerald said, "After all, I certainly never thought _you_ were useless; but you're going to have to learn to accept that it goes both ways. You protect me, and I'll protect you; and with any luck, we'll _both_ make it through this nightmare. Ah, and Calista?"

She took in a soft, shuddering breath; one that tasted like dittany and smelled like fresh parchment.

"Yes?"

His Head Boy demeanour was suddenly back, as he clenched his fingers over her, around the jar.

"Apply the damn paste, please."

"I will, in a minute. But there's something I need to tell you, first."

"I really don't want to hear another word about the anchor point," he said, "I'm not changing my mind."

"It isn't that." She lifted her free hand, and laid it gently over his, and hers, and the jar; it was not exactly romantic, but it was also a far cry from the distance she'd spent the last two days — no, the last _six months_ — trying to cultivate.

"I love you, too."

It wasn't enough, yet, to span the gap she'd so carefully constructed between them; it wasn't enough to heal all of the hurts she'd caused, with both her silences and her words; but it was a start, and like the smooth jar of dittany paste she held in her fist, if she applied it consistently enough, there was still a chance that the scars would never show.


End file.
